How to Study Law | Free Law Revision Timetable PDF

Posted by Catherine Robinson on August 7, 2021

2-min read

This article will take you through the best method of revising law and planning your law revision.

law revision study tips How to Get a First in Law

Download the Free Law Revision Timetable PDF here

The Perks and Pitfalls of Timetabling your Law Revision

Timetabling can do one of two things: (1) provide a perfect plan that takes all the thinking out of co-ordinating your law revision, or (2) provide an endless source of procrastination as you perfect every microdetail of your schedule and then never put it into action.

It is very easy to fall into the latter category, which is why I recommend implementing a law revision technique that takes away all the opportunity for timetable tinkering. But what is this technique? I will explain.

How to Stop Procrastinating

I think the biggest source of timetabling procrastination is not knowing how long each topic is going to take to revise. This doubt gives you the urge to continually adjust and reorder your revision schedule as you continually change your predictions of how long everything is going to take. There is of course the other biggest obstacle - ignoring your timetable and going for a nap.

But that obstacle aside, it is generally very difficult to plan law revision as each topic could be studied for a lifetime and you'd still not be fully acquainted with all of its nuances. The difficulty is apportioning enough time to cover the topic, without giving yourself so much time that you delve too deeply into the details of the topic. Studying areas of law too comprehensively will only guarantee one thing: you will inevitable forget the key principles and all the extra detail before your exam.

Studying Smart

Accordingly, it is crucial to approach law revision with discretion. You cannot possibly learn everything on each topic in law - there is simply too much to know. Therefore, I would dedicate the first part of your revision to making notes on all the key principles of law. As a general rule of thumb, I think 1 month is more than sufficient to do this if you put your mind to it.

Timetabling Making Law Revision Notes

Because you do not know precisely how long it will take to make notes for each topic, I would not bother timetabling each topic of law. Instead, use this free law revision timetable and plan when you are going to revise. This can be as simple as putting an X in the time blocks when you are available to revise. This will provide structure for your revision without allowing you to fall into the trap of procrastinating by coming up with detailed revision timetables. You can then work solidly through your allocated revision blocks writing concise revision notes for each law module you need to revise.

Timetabling Law Revision

Having made your notes, you know exactly how much content there is to memorise. From this, you can simply divide the number of pages of notes you have by the number of days you want to spend revising them. Then, put the pages you have to revise each day into the revision timetable. It's as easy as that. You won't waste time meticulously planning which topics you're going to revise when, you can simply make a note of which pages you will be revising on each day. This takes the guesswork out of your revision and reduces the stress of not knowing if you're going to finish in time.

You may be thinking all of this is easier said than done. How exactly are you to go about making your revision notes? How will you know which principles of law and cases to include? How will you know how much detail to go into? How will you actually revise from your revision notes in a way that allows you to memorise the content? How can you incorporate repetition into your law study schedule? Well, all of that is beyond the scope of this article. I have, however, written an eBook detailing exactly how to do all those things, and how I did them to secure a first class result in my law degree.

You can find the guide here: How to Get a First in Law