The biggest complaint law students and grads have about studying for exams is the cataclysmic, city-razing, disaster movie-level tsunami of law content they have to memorize. Okay, so maybe there’s a little hyperbole in there but you get the point: it’s a relentless and soul-crushing tide of terms, definitions, court cases, and rules you wish you could just download into your brain the same way you download a software program onto your computer.

Well, it turns out that there is indeed a tool that lets you download knowledge almost this effectively and it’s Brainscape’s popular MBE flashcards and bar exam prep podcast (or bar exam prep video series)! These powerful learning tools have been engineered to break that onrushing wall of “overwhelm” into perfectly manageable droplets of knowledge, which you can absorb efficiently using spaced repetition.

Here's our best advice on squeezing maximum value out of Brainscape as you do battle with law school and the bar exam!

[Read: How to learn legal terminology with flashcards: a step-by-step guide]

# 1 Make your own flashcards with Brainscape

You may have discovered Brainscape through our pre-made certified MBE flashcards, which we curated together with our panel of law and bar prep experts, but Brainscape is also a sophisticated platform for making flashcards. And it’s in the process of making flashcards that you really consolidate the information you learn in class or from your outlines, so our first tip is to use Brainscape to make your own flashcards for the new content you learn every day.

Creating flashcards in Brainscape

After each lecture, review your study notes, textbook, and assigned reading and make flashcards for only the most pertinent material you need to know. If you keep this up throughout law school, you’ll accumulate a rich and efficient study resource that you can use to prep for any exam and even the bar, saving you a lot of time!

Just make sure you follow our best practices for making really effective flashcards. We wouldn’t want you wasting any time on creating study assets that are anything short of hyper-efficient!

# 2 Source flashcards by other top law students

You don’t have to make ALL of your own flashcards. In fact, we really encourage you to lean on other top students who have already gone to the trouble of making flashcards for the same law subject/class you may be taking. Brainscape has an enormous marketplace of flashcards for law courses created by top law students, tutors, and professors, which you can sort through if you know what it is you’re after, for example, real estate law, torts, intellectual property, or civil procedure 1L.

By adding any relevant classes to your dashboard, you’ll accumulate the study assets you need to efficiently cope with the onrush of information.

# 3 Collaborate with your classmates or study group

Law school flashcards group study
Brainscape makes it easy to collaborate with fellow law students, making and studying flashcards together.

Alternatively, or additionally, you can collaborate with your classmates or study group to divide and conquer and create flashcards together. Simply decide who is responsible for which section, chapter, or topic and then put a deadline in place for the creation of those flashcards.

In reviewing what your peers have done, encourage others in the group to edit or add flashcards if they encounter any mistakes or missing facts. This process of vetting what others have done deepens everyone’s learning, since you'll be debating with each other on how to make the flashcard decks more complete and helpful.

Here’s how to invite other students to become collaborators on a class you have created.

# 4 Study your flashcards throughout law school

If you want to set yourself up for major success in your law school exams and the bar exam, study your flashcards consistently throughout the semester. Even as little as 5 to 10 minutes’ review every day will ensure that those new concepts you’re learning remain familiar and comfortable as the tidal wave of content continues coming at you.

Brainscape is perfectly set up for convenient daily review. All you have to do is tap a single button, and the app will painlessly feed you a personalized study stream that relentlessly attacks your weaknesses across all the law subjects you are interested in studying. Also, being an app on your phone (or any device), you can open it anytime, anywhere, between classes, on the treadmill, or while waiting for the train, etc. to get in a quick 5 to 10-minute review.

At the end of the day, those short study sessions add up, and if you’re good about using Brainscape whenever you have a little downtime, you could be getting 30 minutes or more of quality review every day! This’ll ensure that you actually memorize the content as you progress through law school, which will place you at an enormous advantage come exam time!

Remember, a little studying every day is exponentially better than cramming all at once.

Spending a little time reviewing content daily is the best and most efficient way to learn permanently. Cramming overwhelms the brain, which cannot retain such large amounts of information all at once.

# 5 Augment your studies with Brainscape’s certified bar exam prep flashcards

Even though you might be making your own flashcards, you should still absolutely lean on Brainscape’s expert-curated MBE flashcards, particularly as you prepare for your final law school exams and the bar exam. Why? Because these have been created by a panel of law and bar prep experts who know what you need to know to pass!

(This makes them comprehensive and yet highly focused on only the most critical information covered not only by the NCBE test plan but also in popular bar prep courses like BarBri, Themis, Kaplan, Adaptibar, BarMax, Critical Pass, and others.)

So, for example, if you're taking a Civil Procedure class, you can also study Brainscape’s MBE Civil Procedure flashcards…

bar exam digital flashcards question and answer
Left: the question side of a civil procedure flashcard | Right: the answer side of the same flashcard. By rating how well you knew the answer on the colored buttons at the bottom, with 1 being “not at all” and 5 being “perfectly” the algorithm automatically determines at what time interval to show you that card again.

Not only will this help you internalize the material more deeply, since the questions are often asked in different ways, but it will also give you a huge head start on your bar exam studies. By the time the bar exam rolls around at the end of law school, you would have worked through all of Brainscape’s MBE flashcards and your confidence ratings (1 to 5) will be prepared for uber-efficient review, allowing you to exclusively focus on your weaknesses.

# 6 Use Brainscape to capture case notes

As a law student, you're required to read (and remember) hundreds of cases, which is pretty overwhelming if you don't have a system for capturing, organizing, and reviewing the most salient information. Enter Brainscape!

Create a deck for each case and populate it with individual flashcards that capture succinct notes on, for example, the legal issues, the holding of the case, and the reason for the court's decision. This makes it easy for you to process your case briefs and review remember the key take-aways.

# 7 Listen to or watch Brainscape’s bar exam prep podcast or videos

Seriously! Brainscape’s bar exam prep podcast is like a personal bar prep assistant who you can summon at any time to quiz you on the most important background knowledge you need to know in order to answer the more detailed questions on the bar. For example: “What are the elements needed to establish a prima facie case for strict liability?” or “What is a 12(b)(6) motion, and what is the deadline for filing?”

Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, (wherever you listen to podcasts) or listen/watch as a series of videos on our Law YouTube Channel. Here’s a hors d'oeuvre of Civil Procedure …

Each episode contains dozens of questions pertaining to a specific area of the law. You can listen to it anytime, anywhere, empowering you to get meaningful review done while doing the dishes, driving to school, working out, or waiting for your next class.

For the full scoop on our hands-free MBE podcast, check out ‘The best podcast for law students & bar exam prep.’

# 8 Go to our Law Academy or YouTube channel for free advice

In addition to flashcards, the team here at Brainscape has also made it a priority to provide law students and grads with a comprehensive library of study guides and videos offering totally free advice on subjects as diverse as:

You’ll find the answers to all of these questions and dozens more in our Law Academy and Law YouTube channel, so please do lean on those resources!

# 9 Become a campus rep for Brainscape and earn money

A final, unexpected way, you can get even more out of Brainscape is to possibly become a campus rep for us and earn a little moolah on the side. (You may as well start chipping away at those law school fees!) How this works is simple. Fill out our campus rep form and we’ll generate you a custom discount code that you can share with your peers, earning a percentage royalty from anyone who upgrades to Brainscape Pro to access our full content and features.

If you’ve discovered the game-changing benefits of Brainscape, you’re in a unique position to help others like you who might be struggling to cope with the overwhelming crush of content. Sharing Brainscape with them not only gives them the tool they need to cope with the memory work but also earns you a little cash incentive. Why not?

A final note on getting the most out of Brainscape

Brainscape's digital Bar Exam flashcards, web study experience

So there are several ways you can get the very most out of Brainscape as a powerful study tool for law school and bar prep:

  • Make your own flashcards for your various law classes;
  • Source flashcards that have been made by other top law students, tutors, and even professors on Brainscape’s Knowledge Genome;
  • Collaborate with your classmates or study group to make awesome flashcards for your classes, saving you time;
  • Study your flashcards throughout law school so that you memorize the content as you progress, rather than cramming it all at the end, right before your exams;
  • Also lean on Brainscape’s certified MBE flashcards to make sure you’re learning everything you absolutely need to know to crush the bar exam;
  • Use Brainscape to capture, summarize, organized, and review your case notes;
  • Sneak in additional review by listening to Brainscape’s MBE prep podcast when you’re doing less cognitively demanding things, like the laundry or exercise (or watch our bar exam prep video series);
  • Go to Brainscape's Law Academy and Law YouTube channel for comprehensive, free study guides and the answers to all your law school and bar prep questions; and
  • Become a campus rep for Brainscape, helping your peers learn more efficiently and earning a little money on the side!

The brain is biologically hardwired to learn through a spaced repetition and Brainscape is an app that combines this essential principle with exceptional content for your law education. For this reason, our study app is used prominently by students at top law schools like Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. And now we hope that you too are able to get the most out of this tool and rise to your challenge.