This lecture was delivered at Fordham Law School on 17 April 2018 for international students with an interested in maximizing their memorization efforts and learning the basics of narrative self-pedagogics and the effective utilization of visualization during extended periods of self-taught learning.

1. HOWTO BEATTHE BAR WITH
TWO (INTENSE) WEEKS OF PREP*
* Apply only in times of utter disaster and calendar-catastrophies.
April 17 2018
T. Alexander Puutio
LL.B., LL.M., LL.M. (Fordham ’17) B.Sc. Econ-, Phd. Law-

2. LETS GET STARTED

3. What passing the bar isn’t
• While highly correlated with
intelligence and mental acuity,
passing the bar is not an IQ test
• High performers will always have a
leg up, but being smart isn’t what
gets people past the bar

4. What passing the bar is about
• What gets even the low
performers through is either luck,
or the right methods, processes
and hard work

5. What this lecture is about
• With such high stakes, most of us
play it safe and choose quantity
instead of quality
• In short: memory is a scalable
instrument that can be finetuned
to excel in seemingly impossible
feats of memorization by anyone

6. Really, anyone?
ABSOLUTELY. (At least most likely)
While IQ and other mental attributes are distributed unequally, the
ingredients (visualization, association and familiarity) needed for
effective memorization are shared by all and almost all of us can
improve how we memorize

7. SELF-PEDAGOGICS

8. Who is in charge?
YOU ARE. (100%)
Self-pedagogics is more than a spin on a well-known term, it gives
you the keys.
Learning is not something that happens to you, it is something you
do to yourself.

9. Self-pedagogics 1.01
Self-pedagogics toolkit covers all
direct and indirect methods
• Mnemonics
• Practice
• Compensation strategies
• Planning, evaluating
• Emotions
• Social

10. Outcomes we want to achieve
The bar exam is all about explicit-memory tasks where you need to
I. Consciously recall or recognize information; and
ii. Apply it correctly to the facts at hand
Declare (the applicable rule is)
Recall (the applicable rule is in question is – and it states that - )
Apply (the applicable rule is in question is – and it states that -, accordingly)

11. Outcomes we want to achieve (con’t)
However, the exam format plays in our favor…
The bar exam is a cued recall and recognition task instead of a
free or serial recall where you are writing on an empty piece of paper

12. YOUR
WEAPONS OF CHOICE

13. What works for cued recall tests
Cued recall test favor those with instant access to
associative information
What works poorly:
i. Loose, and unconnected learning that is not applied when learnt
ii. Rote learning without entry points to the red thread (what letter comes after H?)
What works like a charm:
i. Narratives
ii. Visualization (FORGET MINDMAPS)
iii. Megahertz-models with furious refresh rates right before the test
iv. Other mnemonics

14. Here’s a useless narrative you’ll have a hard
time not remembering
Our brains have evolved in social contexts where agency
abounds.
Easiest way to make socially “useless” information stick is
to give it some narrative.
Fact 1:
The Queen died
Fact 2:
The King died two weeks later, OUT OF HEARTBREAK
Application to bar exam:
Where rules are unfamiliar, counter-intuitive disconnected and arbitrary, create your own
hypothetical, feuds between Blackacre and Whiteacre are a good way to get started

15. Visualization BUT NEVER MIND MAPS
ALL OF US are experts in locational imaging and
arranging/analyzing spatial information for a simple reason
– without these skills our forbearers died off.
Only for anti-visualizing Johannites:
Close your eyes and imagine every room you have stayed in for more than a
week –which rooms were next to them and what were their main features?
There are two main methods you will want to consider,
i. roman rooms (cases, header-level information) and
ii. memory castles (heavy-duty)

16. Making roman rooms and memory castles
work for the bar exam
1. Only use these when the information can’t be handled by easier
methods (chunking, abbreviations or acronyms)
2. Take 5-10 mins to collect a meaningful assemblage of information,
connected or disconnected
3. Divide the information into discrete units that have unique features
4. Aggrandize, pervert and “clownify” these units into something
memorable (the constitution, in the hands of a naked George
Washington riding an eagle)
5. For rooms, create interactions and narratives to capture the spirit of the
case in emotions, context and implications as well as information (serial
recall)
6. For castles, create trails where objects wait for you to find them (free
recall)

17. Mind maps – its time to ditch them
Yes, mind maps work – however so does rote learning. They are
grossly inefficient for serious learning and should be used only
to assemble information for further processing.
Mind maps employ the visual system similarly to the rote
learning of a “virtual” abacus, without the benefit of universal
applicability. In two repeated words: GROSSLY INEFFICIENT.
Never has there been a homo sapiens that roamed the earth
encoding information in a 2D format, connected with carefully
crafted lines of various color, orientation and width.

18. Time your peak right on exam day
Cued recall tests are suckers
for associative information.
The more you have
available at the time of the
exam the better.
Do not fade out by starting
too early, too hard and
exhausting yourself.
Don’t overpace yourself
either but rather, time
yourself so that you peak at
the exam day.

19. Sustaining your peaks – megahertz methods
and the importance of constant maintenance
The bar exam covers more information than anyone can hope
to effectively recall for extended periods of time.
Sustaining peak recall requires constant maintenance of what
you have learnt.
The solution to the hockey-stick dilemma: always be
refreshing. Each page, each hour, each day.

20. A self-similar study schedule
First phase Second phase Final prep
Acquisition 90% Acquisition 50% Acquisition 1%
Maintenance 10% Maintenance 50% Maintenance 99%
First hour Second hour Final half-hour
Acquisition 90% Acquisition 50% Acquisition 1%
Maintenance 10% Maintenance 50% Maintenance 99%
An effective
study-plan is
simple and
self-similar.
Timescale: whole study period
Timescale: each 2,5hr day

21. And then comes all the rest of mnemonics
For everything else in life there are:
• Acronyms
• Abbreviation
• Synonyms
• Rhymes, keywords and trigger-terms
• Chunking
• Rote learning

22. THANK YOU
alexander.puutio@gmail.com