Tips To Read A Law Book Fast

“A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools”-  Thomas Jefferson

Reading law books is a skill that everyone in the field of law needs to master in order to be successful in a career that they are on. Perhaps, law books are the most tedious, dull and bulky books and reading them is often a laborious task. However, these excuses do not oust the urgency of reading law books for those who really want to delve deep into the intricacies of the law. So important is to read, so important is to read fast in such a highly competitive dynamic profession.

Here are the ways and tips to improve your speed while reading a law book.

Know your speed

The first and foremost thing you must know as a reader is to know yourself your reading speed. Assessing your average speed of reading will give you a basic understanding of where you stand in terms of reading. It is essential for boosting your pace of reading any books including law books. This can be done in very simple steps. First, you read for five minutes and mark where you started and where you stopped in the text. Calculate how many words you read in total and divide by five. This number is your average number of words per minute.

If you’re reading at a speed of 250 words per minute, you’re having an average speed of an adult, but yet to reach the pace of a law student or a lawyer whose average pace of reading cannot expected to be less than 500 words per minute. However, the challenge should not be restricted to this word limit as our mission is to read as fast as you can, without compromising comprehension.

Improve background knowledge

Background knowledge is nothing but the ancillary information that is needed to facilitate your understanding of the concepts in the law book that you’re reading. To comprehend a legal text requires firstly, a command over legal terminology and secondly, you must be acquainted with the basic legal and social theories. Legal terminology covers the whole vocabulary specific to the legal profession and those words which have a radically different meaning in legal and general usage. Most of the law books embrace a wide variety of legal jargons, the unfamiliarity of which will consume a lot of time in comprehending what you read and further, slow down your pace. Therefore, it is very important to have a good command over the legal terms so as to read a law book fast.

Any law is rooted in or supported by one or more legal or social theories or principles. Therefore, the knowledge in legal and social theories and principles gives you an insight into the dominant legal concepts and it serves as a lubricant while you’re reading a law book. So, it is highly preferred to be acquainted with such theories related to the subject matter of the law book at hand. This can be done by doing some preliminary research on the topic dealt in the book and in this task your first-year law school notes can help you.

Fix the purpose of reading

Before you read a law book, the very first issue you have to fix is your purpose of reading. It is all about what you’re going to gain at the end of reading a law book. You may read a law book for research purposes, for preparing for exams, for reference, to understand a concept, etc. The strategies for reading a law book may vary with change in the purpose of reading. If the object of reading is to research on a specific topic, you’re at liberty skip the chapters or topics in the book which are not relevant to your area of study and focus more on the relevant portions. However, you cannot adopt this strategy when the law book at your hand is covered under the syllabus for your examinations. For that, you need to go through each and every topic thoroughly. Thus, strategically approaching a law book and its selective reading will help you to digest the material efficiently and thereby increase your reading speed.

Preview the Book

What a preview of a book does to a reader is just like what a trailer of a movie does to its viewers. To understand the context of a law book is very essential for covering the entire book in less time and it can be done simply by scanning the book from the beginning to the end. You must go through the headings, the subheadings, bold or large or italicized words, bullet points and images and pictures as well. This attempt to understand the context and structure of the text will give you an extra momentum for reading that law book.

Read in clumps

The conventional method of reading is to read word by word. However, this is no more a smart way to read any book especially a voluminous law book. Reading in clumps using your peripheral vision is a very much acknowledged way of fast reading. It is nothing but the skill of taking 4 to 16 words at a time while you’re looking at a single word. However, this is not an easy skill to master as it requires your deliberate effort. Reading in clumps not only makes your reading fast but also helps you to avoid vocalizing.

Stop sub-vocalizing

Sub-vocalization is a very common habit that slows down the reading. It involves saying words in your head while you are reading. If you really want to read any book fast, you have to first troubleshoot this habit. Otherwise, you will not be able to read a law book fast as the law books are always lengthy and tough to read and comprehend. Using your hand to guide your eyes, listening to some music, or distracting yourself by using some other techniques can help you get rid of the habit of sub-vocalizing.

Fast but Effective

Finally, what if you read fast but do not comprehend anything? It will not serve any purpose. You need to read a law book faster because you need to gain an edge over your competition. The competition is not for reading but for acquiring knowledge and applying it. Hence, there should be a balance between your pace and comprehension and for that, you must be mindful and focused while you are reading. This will help you to avoid regression while reading. Effective reading further improves your legal vocabulary and grip on legal language which in turn boosts your pace of reading.

Conclusion

Generally, if you do a lot of something you will get the grip on it. That is, you cannot acquire the skill of fast reading overnight. You must first acknowledge the fact that general reading is different from legal reading. It involves a distinct vocabulary and terminology. A routine reading of law books and legal texts will help you to enhance your legal terminology. It will also improve your strategical and selective reading skills. Therefore, practice legal reading so as to read any law book fast.

This article has been written by Anitta Varghese, 3rd year B.A. LL.B student at ST JOSEPH’S COLLEGE OF LAW, BENGALURU.

Also Read – Tricks to crack Judicial Examination

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