Activity: Summary of the Day

quill1Summarizing is one of the most crucial skills in law school. To make this point to my students, I like to turn to my Teaching Assistant and ask him how much he uses summarizing in his judicial clerkship, to which he solemnly responds: “All the time.”

However, teaching summarizing to international LL.M. students can be extremely challenging. Think about it: How did you learn to summarize? Personally, I can’t identify any one moment when I figured it out. And I can’t point to any specific and helpful strategy that was ever explicitly taught to me for summarizing. I just figured it out over time through trial and error and have internalized it to the point where it’s difficult to explain how I know how to do it. (I imagine this is the same for others. But please share if you have a different experience.)

I think one aspect of good summarizing is Continue reading