Colors

From September 16, 2010:

Before starting law school, I glanced through a couple of prep books, full of advice on how to survive the next three years.  One method they suggested was highlighting in technicolor — i.e. Use a different color for facts, procedural posture, reasoning, precedent, holding, dissents, etc.  I’ve been putting this practice to use, and I like it.  Not only does it help differentiate between the different parts of a case, but when I open my casebooks, they are aglow with bright, happy colors.

There I sit in Torts, Regulatory State or Contracts about to discuss res ipsa loquitur, the 1966 Motor Vehicle Safety Act, or consideration when I would have really liked to sleep for another hour… and bam!  I open my book and a beautiful array of greens, blues, pinks, oranges, reds, yellows and purples adorn the pages.  They make the words look so much prettier, the cases look more inviting and the statutes–yes, even the statutes–seem friendlier.

Seriously, seeing the sentence, “First, in those contracts where the condition calls for satisfaction as to commercial value or quality, operative fitness, or mechanical utility, dissatisfaction cannot be claimed arbitrarily, unreasonably, or capriciously…, and the standard of a reasonable person is used in determining whether satisfaction has been received…” is so much better when highlighted in cheery orange (Mattei v. Hopper, Supreme Court of California, 51 Cal.2d 119, 1958)

So, to all of you out there, I encourage technicolor highlighting.  Even if you have no idea what the case is about, it certainly will look perty after you’ve colored the whole thing.  If you really use your imagination, you can pretend you’re back in kindergarten and your only homework consisted of coloring in the pictures on your math homework: Two fish plus three fish equals… lots of different colored fishies.

Happy highlighting.