Each fall, as midterm season rolls around, my office hours fill with anxious undergraduates asking, “Will this be on the test?” “Do we need to memorize this case name?” “What about this quote from the Dissent, do we need to know it word-for-word?” These are fair questions, but they reflect a misunderstanding about what learning the law really requires. In college, success often comes from absorbing information and repeating it back in the right format. In law school, that model falls apart. The challenge is no longer about recalling facts; it is about applying concepts to new, unfamiliar scenarios. Law school exams, after all, are not really designed to test what you know. They test how you think.

The Shift: From Knowing to Thinking Like a Lawyer

The heart of legal education lies in one deceptively simple skill: issue spotting. Given a novel fact pattern, can you identify the legal issues at play, analyze them using precedent, and argue various interpretations? Issue spotting is a skill that cannot be memorized; it must be practiced.

This is one of the hardest adjustments I see my students make. Undergraduate learning often rewards precision: right answers, neat categories, tidy conclusions. Law thrives in the gray areas (which is why, I might argue, it is the most fun discipline to practice). The most successful students are not those who can recite a case word-for-word, but those who can adapt their knowledge to a set of facts they have never seen before.

When I explain this to my students, I often see a mix of relief and panic. Relief, because it means they don’t have to memorize hundreds of cases. Panic, because it means they can’t prepare by simply rereading notes. So what do you do when all of your “normal” study methods are suddenly taken away from you? 

Why Memorization Is Not Enough

To be clear, memorization certainly has its place. You can’t analyze the application of a rule you don’t know. But knowing a rule is only step one. Law School Toolbox contends that “one of the most important phrases to know regarding memorization is repetition equals retention. This phrase brings up the fact that you need to repeatedly study something and actively practice recalling it.”  

Students who are the most successful on law school exams are the ones who actively engage with the material meaningfully and often. Passively re-reading your notes (particularly if they are merely transcripts of your professor’s lecture) may lull you into a false sense of knowledge of the material. However, the real test that matters in law school and in practice is whether you can apply those rules to facts that don’t look exactly like the examples you have studied. No two cases ever unfold the same way. Clients don’t walk in with hypotheticals pulled from a textbook. They came with messy, complex situations that require judgment, interpretation, and creativity. That is why law school exams are structured as they are: they mirror the unpredictability of real-world lawyering.

Teaching Students to Embrace the “Gray”

For students accustomed to certainty, the ambiguity of legal reasoning can feel deeply uncomfortable. I see this especially among my pre-law undergraduates who are used to being top performers in more traditional academic settings. They want to master the law as a set of rules, not as a way of thinking. It can be frustrating for them when I refuse to give what they perceive as the “right” answer. When I respond to their carefully constructed hypotheticals with my usual “it depends,” the cognitive dissonance is palpable. They crave closure; I offer nuance. Over time, though, something shifts. More often than not, when I open my mouth to say “it depends,” several students jump in before I can even finish: “She’s not going to give away the ending.” That is when I know the lesson is landing; not because they have found the one “right” answer, but because they have started to understand that in law, reasoning matters more than resolution.

Once they start to embrace the uncertainty and realize that the “best” answer is often the most well-reasoned one, not the most definitive, something clicks. One of the most rewarding parts of teaching pre-law students is watching that transformation happen. The moment when a student stops asking, “What’s the right answer?” or “What facts do I need to know?” and starts asking, “How would I argue this?”— that is when they are truly thinking like a lawyer.

Learning for Life, Not Just the Exam

This shift in mindset matters beyond law school. In practice, lawyers must interpret ambiguous statutes, reconcile conflicting precedents, and advise clients whose situations fall between neat legal lines. The ability to navigate uncertainty with confidence—to spot issues, think critically, and reason analogically—is what separates competent practitioners from exceptional ones.

In pulling together materials for this piece, I came across a law review article by Professor Sandra Simpson identifying three core skills that many students lack, but that are essential for success in law school, legal practice, and beyond:

1. Cognitive adaptability: the ability to revise one’s reasoning in response to feedback and to transfer learning to new situations.

2. Self-regulation: the capacity to plan, monitor, and reflect on one’s own learning process.

3. Critical thinking: engaging in disciplined analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and reasoning.

These skills are crucial because legal education and legal work demand moving beyond rote recall, dealing with ambiguous facts, revising arguments, and self-directed learning.

Professor Simpson contends law school assessments (and many undergraduate settings) stress memorization and “plug-and-chug” problem-solving, which align poorly with the skills actually needed in a legal career. It’s also why legal education, when done right, prepares students for far more than just the bar exam. It trains them to be problem-solvers in any setting: government, policy, business, academia, or advocacy. 

Moving Forward: Rethinking How We Learn

Instead of rereading your notes for the tenth time, test yourself with new fact patterns. Instead of trying to memorize every holding, focus on understanding why the court ruled as it did and how you might argue the opposite side. Instead of seeking certainty, get comfortable articulating arguments on both sides. This type of practice is not optional. It is central to succeeding in law school and beyond. 

To operationalize this:

• Break your study into phases: forethought (what do I know? what do I need to learn?), performance (apply the rule to the fact pattern), and self-reflection (how did I do? What could I adjust?). This mirrors the three parts of self-regulated learning described in Simpson’s work.

• Seek assignments and practice opportunities that force you out of the memorization loop. Ask yourself: “What would change if the facts shifted this way? What if the party were different, or the timing, or the contract language, or the actor?”

• Embrace ambiguity. In fact, learn to expect it. One of the most freeing moments I see in class is when a student stops asking, “What is the right answer?” and starts asking, “What’s the best argument I can make?” That is the very mindset Simpson says law schools should nurture, because the legal profession demands exactly that kind of thinking.

• Connect the skill to your future practice. The lawyers who thrive are those who don’t wait for clear instructions. They anticipate issues, pivot when facts change, monitor their own work, and adapt accordingly. Those are precisely the skills Simpson identifies as underdeveloped among many incoming law students.

The law doesn’t live in your class notes or outline. It lives in your analysis.

As educators, we can help by demystifying this process. We can make explicit what is often left implicit: that learning to think like a lawyer is not about absorbing rules, but about mastering the art of applying them. Simpson’s scholarship reminds us that simply teaching more doctrine is not enough. Curricula must also build students’ ability to self-regulate, adjust to complexity, engage in feedback loops, and apply principles in novel contexts.

Why This Matters

Teaching students to move beyond memorization isn’t just a pedagogical choice; it’s a professional imperative. The legal world is changing rapidly, and the lawyers best equipped to navigate that change will be those who can adapt, analyze, and create.

For students and for the profession, embracing the shift from memorization to mastery is not only the key to law school success, but also to the kind of flexible, creative thinking the next generation of lawyers will need most.

Shea Holman Killian is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at George Mason University, where she teaches various law and government courses and guides students through the Jurisprudence Learning Community (JPLC). She also serves as a member of the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Gender and Policy Center advisory board, contributing her expertise to advancing gender equity in policy and governance. Outside of George Mason, Shea serves as Counsel at the Purple Method, providing strategic legal guidance, overseeing policy development, and collaborating with stakeholders to create safer and more equitable workplaces.