Note taking and minute writing
LUG-105 English and Legal Language, Unit III: Note taking. · LLB · 60 min
Note taking as the law student's and the lawyer's working method: why notes beat transcripts, the main methods (linear or outline, Cornell, mind map, charting, sentence method) and which suit law, a working set of legal abbreviations, and worked notes from a lecture, a judgment and a client interview. Then minute writing: what minutes are, their purpose and legal status, the three kinds (verbatim, resolution, narrative), the format, and a complete model set of minutes of a Moot Court Society meeting. The 2018-19 and 2025-26 papers asked both.
Objectives
- Explain what note taking is and why it matters for a law student and a practitioner.
- Describe the linear, Cornell, mind-map, charting and sentence methods and choose the right one for a lecture, a judgment and an interview.
- Use a consistent set of abbreviations and symbols in legal notes.
- Define minutes, state their purpose and legal status, and distinguish verbatim, resolution and narrative minutes.
- Draft minutes of a meeting in the standard format.
Slides
- What note taking is and why a lawyer cannot do without it
- Methods of note taking I: linear and Cornell
- Methods of note taking II: mind map, charting, sentence method, and which suits law
- Abbreviations and symbols for legal notes
- Worked example I: notes from a lecture
- Worked example II: notes from a judgment and from a client interview
- Minutes: meaning, purpose and legal status
- Kinds of minutes
- Format and language of minutes
- Model minutes: a meeting of the Moot Court Society
- How the examiner asks it
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