Lawstu Flashcards

When to use

Reach for this when you need durable recall of black-letter rules, element lists, exceptions, and key holdings. The skill turns your outline and briefs into atomic, one-fact cards you can drill in any spaced-repetition system.

Not for: conceptual understanding or application skill (use lawstu-socratic-drill and lawstu-irac-practice — flashcards memorize, they do not teach reasoning). It builds study cards from material you provide; it will not generate answers to graded assignments. Not for building the outline itself (see lawstu-outline-builder).

Method

1. Source from your own outline. Cards are only as good as the rules you have already synthesized. Decision point: if a rule is fuzzy in your outline, fix it there first — do not memorize a wrong card.
2. Make each card atomic — one fact, one prompt. Split multi-element rules into a "name the elements" card plus one card per tricky element.
3. Prefer active prompts. "Elements of adverse possession?" beats "Adverse possession is…". Front asks, back answers tersely.
4. Add cloze deletions for element lists and thresholds ("Statute of Frauds covers contracts over $___").
5. Tag by course and doctrine so you can drill a single topic before its exam.
6. Include a case-holding deck — front: case name + one-line facts; back: holding + rule. Keep holdings to one sentence.

Example

Rule card — Front: "Hearsay definition (FRE 801)?" Back: "Out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted." Then a cloze: "Hearsay is inadmissible unless ___ (an exception applies)." Then an application-adjacent card: "Statement offered only to show notice — hearsay? → No, not for its truth."

Pitfalls

• Overloaded cards (a whole doctrine on one back) — you memorize the shape, not the content.
• Verbatim casebook prose that you recognize but cannot produce.
• No application cards, so you know rules but freeze on facts.
• Never re-drilling; recall decays without spaced review.

Output format

Course | doctrine tag
Rule cards:
  Q: [active prompt] | A: [terse rule]
Cloze cards:
  [sentence with ___ blanks]
Case-holding deck:
  Front: case + 1-line facts | Back: holding + rule
Drill schedule: today / +1d / +3d / +7d

Reference

• Case-brief format feeds the holding deck (lawstu-case-brief).
• IRAC: flashcards fortify the Rule element of IRAC; pair with application drills.
• Bar framing: element and exception cards map onto MBE-tested rules; a course deck extends into a bar deck (lawstu-bar-prep-questions).