Using Flashcards in Studying for the Bar Exam

Study strategies for the bar exam are a controversial topic—possibly even more controversial than law school study strategies. Everyone has an opinion! And many claim their way is the only path to success. Hopefully, through the course of law school, you have realized that there are a variety of study strategies and the most important thing is finding what works well for you.

This applies to flashcards as well. Flashcards do have identifiable advantages. Some people find just making them to help in forming connections and internalizing information. But their greatest benefit comes from using them to test yourself. Repeated testing has been shown to improve recall, and flashcards are an effective way to test yourself.

If you’ve found over the course of high school, university, and law school that flashcards are an effective tool for you, here are four things you can put on flashcards, and four ways you can use those flashcards in studying for the bar exam:

Ideas of What to Put on Flashcards

1. Start with Definitions or Elements of Tests

Some people think of these as “definitions,” of crimes or torts, while others thing of these as “tests,” but regardless of the term that you use, turn it into a flashcard. Let’s use criminal law as an example here. For every charge or crime, create a new flashcard with the elements that are needed to prove it.

So you can create one flashcard with “Robbery” on the front, and

• Wrongful taking
• Of personal property of another
• From their person or presence
• By force or threat of immediate physical harm
• With intent to permanently deprive them of it

on the back.

For tests like this one, with multiple elements, number them like in the example above. As you practice with this flashcard, you’ll learn the elements, but also memorize that there are five of them. As a result, when you have to write about robbery in an essay, you’ll be less likely to accidentally skip one of the five elements.

This is the most traditional way of using flashcards, and will probably be the most familiar based on your past use. If it has worked for you before, take advantage of that and use it again now!

2. Take a Step up your Outline and Create a Flashcard Tying Together Related Concepts

To build off of our criminal law example above, you can create one flashcard with “Property Crimes,” and list

• Larceny
• Embezzlement
• False Pretenses
• Robbery

on the back.

These flashcards will help you link ideas together, and can be especially helpful in preparing for essay questions. When you see one of these triggered by a fact pattern in an essay, you can do a quick mental check of all of the others to see whether any apply. Memorizing them as a group on a flashcard can help internalize these connections. So when you are in the midst of writing, you have to spend less time thinking about related crimes and can easily recall them as a group.

3. Take Two Steps Down in your Outline and Make Flashcards for Complicated Subtopics

There are some things — certain elements of a crime, clarifications, qualifications, defenses, limitations — that can be a bit more complicated and deserve their own flashcard. For example, simply having a flashcard for “Defenses,” will be helpful, as will a flashcard for “Attempt,” but you can also have a flashcard for “Attempt — Defenses.” There you can note down the special rules around which defenses do or do not apply to attempt:

Are a defense: legal impossibility

Are NOT a defense: factual impossibility and abandonment

You’ve now made flashcards out of definitions and tests, groups of related ideas, and important subtopics. What else could there possibly be?

4. Use Flashcards for Opening Paragraphs/Sentences for Essay Questions

If your bar exam preparation includes drafting and learning some pre-planned paragraphs for use on essay questions, then flashcards are a great way to learn them. On the front of your card, you can write whatever the triggering issue is and “paragraph,” and put the text on the back. You can shuffle these in among the other substantive issues for that exam topic (whether it be criminal law, constitutional law, or something else), as trying to memorize too many paragraphs together can be a bit daunting.

How to Use your Flashcards in Studying

1. Check your Progress

The greatest advantage of flashcards is that they allow you to test yourself. You can do this in a number of different ways, but one that can be very effective, especially as a review or the first time you use your flashcards after making them, is to go through them all quickly, one after the other.

To do this, shuffle your cards and start at the top of your pile. Look at the word on the front of your first flashcard and do your best to recite whatever is on the back within a few seconds. Don’t spend too long trying to recall—you either know it or you don’t. And then check yourself with what is on the back of the card. Those you know well put off to the right and those you don’t know put off to left. This is even an approach you can use while on the move—walking to the store, walking the dog, sitting on the bus, because you can create your piles between your fingers on one hand.

This will give you a good sense of how much material you know well by comparing your two piles. This is valuable information as you plan or adjust your study schedule. It can also be a great first pass at new material.

2. Turn Unknowns into Knowns

Another effective strategy for using flashcards is to go through all of your flashcards quickly, testing yourself like in the above method, but sort your cards into three piles as you go through them: things you know very well (word-for-word, you know everything on the back of these cards!), things you mostly know (you are able to recall most of the information, but not all of it), and things you really don’t know (you got nothing to barely anything correct). Once you’ve made these piles, focus on the third group, systematically going through them in small batches until you can move them into the second group. Repetition is key here. When you have managed to move everything from the third pile to the second, reshuffle and go through this pile, working to be able to move everything into the first pile. Once you have done that, reshuffle all of your flashcards and go through them again. If you still have only one pile — that’s great! If not, start again (but, depending on your timing, maybe tomorrow).

3. Sort with your Flashcards to Make Connections

If you are feeling somewhat confident with the material on your flashcards, spend a little time sorting them based on specific types of connections. For example, go through and pull out all of those that deal with defenses, then crimes, and then groups of crimes. Then reshuffle and find each crime and which defenses do and do not apply to it. Then reshuffle and sort out crimes that share a common mental state requirement. Be creative. This is a way to help you build connections between concepts, and the more connections you have, the more comfortable you will be in answering questions on the exam.

4. Spread out your flashcard study

Space out your time with flashcards. Research shows that “interleaving,” or interspersing practice of different skills, improves retention and leads to faster improvement. In studying for the bar exam, this means that it is more beneficial to break up the types of studying and topics of study and mix them up. Don’t use flashcards all day, but instead, study with one set of flashcards, put them down, draft a practice essay, pick up another set of flashcards, review something you know pretty well, focus on something new, and keep rotating. Not every five minutes, otherwise that becomes too much like multi-tasking (which is not beneficial), but several times during the course of your day of study.

If experience has taught you that flashcards are an effective study strategy for you, try these different ways of employing them in your bar study, and don’t be afraid to experiment—you might find other ways that are especially effective for you!

Did you find this post helpful? Check out some other great articles:

• Bar Study Tips for Different Learning Styles
• Memorize This! Five Memorization Techniques that will Help You Succeed on the Bar Exam
• Why Waiting to Memorize until the Last Two Weeks is a Bad Idea
• Tackling Bar Exam Materials Like a Pro