Complete Guide To Note-Taking In Lectures

Even when I started law school in 2014 (well into the digital era), I still saw many people using pen and paper to take notes in lectures.

In law school, you will see huge benefits at exam time from having your lecture information easily accessible, complete, searchable and readily available when you need it.

To achieve this, there is no substitute for typing (and copy and pasting) your notes on a laptop. Not only is typing much faster than handwriting, you will also have the benefit of your notes always being readable, searchable and printable.

Either Mac or Windows will work fine. I used Microsoft Word to take lecture notes, but any similar note-taking program or application will do the job.

2. Refer to the Lecture Slides

Many lecturers produce and distribute PowerPoint slides which guide you through the structure of the lecture.

You should use these slides to your advantage as much as possible.

Always download the slides prior to the lecture (if available), and have the slides open in another tab next to your lecture notes document during the presentation.

Where appropriate, you can then copy and paste text or images/graphics directly from the lecture slides into your lecture notes document. The goal is to consolidate all of the lecture information into your document so all of the information is readily accessible in one place.

However, I would recommend copy and pasting information only as a time saver where you understand the content you are copying. If you do not understand what is on the slides, or you think it is worded in a sub-optimal way, you should take clues from what the lecturer is saying to decipher the slides and note down the content in ways that you understand.

Also, where lecture notes include dense chunks or text or lengthy quotes, you may be better off copying chunks of text and then re-wording as necessary.

3. Create and Maintain a Structure

Your job during the lecture is to make sense of the material and note it down in a structured fashion. You want to come away from the lecture with a coherent document that you can easily refer to and understand later on. 

Structuring the notes under organised headings will assist with understanding the material and will help you piece together how each aspect of the content fits into the big picture. You will need to make sure that all pieces of content addressed in the lecture are included under a heading and are given a place in the “big picture” of the topic.

At times, lecturers will structure their content well and the structure of your notes will come together easily. They may even give you a structured outline of the main sub-topics being covered at the start of the lecture.

Other times, where lecturers are more scattered and less organised, you will need to think about how all of the content being discussed is related and where it all fits into the bigger picture of the topic.

To do this, you should always use big, numbered headings whenever a new sub-topic is introduced (see image below). Use sub-headings where necessary, and use dot points often.

Where the lecturer gives an outline/contents table in the first couple of slides, note down those headings immediately and then take notes under each heading as the content is covered.