Students telling me they listen to audiobooks, youtube, and outlines increased the last few years. I completely understand the urge. Commute times are long in many metro areas. The time seems wasted if not listening to something impactful. I listen to books every day that relate to learning and motivation. I listened to bar outlines on CDs, which were not mp3s, on my commute during bar prep. However, there are problems with relying exclusively on audio materials.
I read an article a month or two ago that indicated audiobooks don’t provide structure when only listening. I experienced this first-hand recently. The book I am listening to right now has a specific structure that is similar to law school outlines. There are a handful of main points, and within each main point, there are subsets of information. However, I don’t remember the structure at all. I can’t piece together how the information fits. I remember parts from the book with tips and information about being more productive, but I can’t recreate the main points just from listening. Listening and driving (or doing anything else) makes it difficult to create schema.
Cognitive schema and mental models are critical for law school. Understanding the big picture and how concepts relate to each other is the foundation for analyzing new legal fact patterns. Without the steps of the analysis, answers will miss sub-issues or concepts professors allocate points to. Missing the structure is missing the foundation to legal analysis.
The problem is exacerbated by our own beliefs. Some students believe they should only study using their preferred learning style, and if they identify as auditory learners, they may listen to outlines or books without doing much else. Listening to books can also provide a false sense of confidence. I heard information from the audiobook, and I can even recite some of the productivity tips. I have a false sense of true understanding. Spending time working through the material with a clear structure is critical to organize the information.
I can’t write this whole post from an audiobooks bad perspective though. I do enjoy listening to books on my drive, and as I have written before, I incorporate information from those books into my classes. I think audiobooks or listening to outlines can be helpful. The key is to use them as a supplement to structural learning. Creating an outline, flowchart, or other studying device that represents the steps in the analysis creates the schema or mental model for legal analysis. Listening to information can then be beneficial by thinking about where the information fits into that schema. Using different tools to complement each other will work best preparing for finals.
(Steven Foster)
