Tips for Group Studying & Instructions for Reserving the Law Library’s Group Study Rooms

Tips for Successful Group Studying: 

  1. Keep the group size small and manageable.
    • 3-5 members is a good size for a study group.
  2. Keep Study Group Goals Realistic.
    • Set a realistic goal for efficient studying time. 2 or 3 hours with breaks will likely be productive, but 5 or 6 hours may be too ambitious.
    • Build in time at the beginning to catch up and chat with your friends.
    • Build in study breaks to refresh and re-group.
  3. Keep Study Time Focused.
    • Pick a group leader to keep the group on track.
    • Try to limit unnecessary distractions.
    • Try to start on time and end on time.
  4. Stick to a plan.
    • Discuss with group members how the study group time will be used most effectively, depending on the studying styles of the group members.
    • Try to meet the needs of all group members—this is where it is beneficial to keep the size of the group small.
    • Create a schedule/syllabus of tasks:
      • I.e. Spend an hour on practice questions, 20 min talking out/explaining big concepts, 45 min on a practice essay.
  5. Be prepared.
    • Study ahead of time so group time can be used efficiently.
    • Identify concepts that you struggle with.
    • Make a list of questions to ask group members.
  6. Take Action.
    • If there are areas multiple group members are struggling with, email the professor with questions. Send a single email from one group member and share the response with everyone in the group.
    • Come to the conference prepared. Have specific questions ready. It may be helpful to assign questions to specific group members so everyone participates, keeping the meeting productive and beneficial for everyone.
  7. Reflect.
    • Be honest with yourselves— how productive was the study group?  Be open to discussing with your group members what did and did not work.
    • Adjust based on your reflections.  This will ensure that the study group is working for everyone.
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How to Reserve Group Study Rooms

The Law Library has five group study rooms where students can meet with their study groups.  Students can register to use one of our rooms using our Room Reservation system.  Law Students may reserve two 2-hour blocks per day for a total of 4-hours maximum for study rooms per day.

The same study group should not book the same room for more than 4 hours per day.  Students must reserve the room using the link above BEFORE entering a room.

Study Room Reservation Guidelines:

  • Rooms are only available to Law Students, Law Faculty and Law Staff.
  • Rooms are available for booking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • Each study room booking defaults to a maximum 2-hour reservation.
  • Law Students may reserve two 2-hour blocks per day for a total of 4-hours maximum for study rooms per day.
  • The 2-hour reservations may be consecutive, or may be split.
  • The same study group should not book the same room for more than 4 hours per day.
  • Study room reservations can be made up to 2 weeks in advance.
  • During Law Library finals hours, study room reservations can be made 2 days in advance.
  • You are expected to use the room while you have it reserved, please do not leave the room empty for an extended period of time.
  • If you are finished with a study room before your reservation has expired, please contact the Circulation Desk at 806-742-3957 or email to circulation.law@ttu.edu.

For more resources on how to cope with the challenges of law school, please see the Law Library’s libguide of Library Services, where you can access more resources, ideas for how to de-stress, and much more.

Ask A Librarian

The Texas Tech Law Library has added a new service for our faculty, staff and students. You are now able to chat with a librarian during our normal reference hours (8:30 am – 4:30 pm Monday – Friday). Outside of our reference hours you can still send a question and it will be responded to the next business day.

Legal Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

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The UCLA School of Law Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library has compiled a timely guide (https://libguides.law.ucla.edu/coronavirus) to help locate legal responses to COVID-19.  According to the guide, “many units of government at all levels (federal, state, and local) have issued, and continue to issue, legal responses to the coronavirus epidemic, and some states have laws pre-dating the epidemic but that have become more relevant, such as quarantine statutes and requirements for paid sick leave.  This [sic] goal of this guide is to provide links to primary sources and high-quality summaries to these.”

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The federal materials provided in the guide include links to items published by various federal agencies as well as Public Laws about COVID-19.  While the major focus of the guide is on federal and California resources, there are sections dedicated to other state and local jurisdictions.

There is also a useful section that provides links to “Other Resources” that users might find educational.

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Among the Other Useful Resources is the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource Kit from LexisAdvance and the COVID-19 Workforce Virtual Toolkit from the HHS.

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For assistance with locating further information on COVID-19, please contact the Law Library Reference Desk between the hours of 8:30am and 4:30pm Monday through Friday via email or phone.

Email:  reference.law@ttu.edu

Phone:  806-742-7155

 

Access to Online Study Aid Resources

During the final month of the spring semester, please be aware of the various resources that the Law Library is making available to the Texas Tech Law School community.  In particular, we wish to highlight the various study aid resources being provided by the Law Library.  These include two familiar (I hope) collections, the West Academic Study Aid library and the CALI library.  We have recently added a new resource for your benefit, the Wolters Kluwer Study Aids Library.  For these and access to other resources, please visit the Remote Access to Library Services libguide located at https://libguides.law.ttu.edu/remotelibraryservices.

West Academic Study Aid Library

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The West Academic Study Aid resource contains many of your favorite study aid series, such as Exam Pro (now with Quizzes), Flash Cards, Blackletter Outlines, and Gilberts to name just a few.  There are over 640+ titles (and counting) covering 1L classes, 2L/3L classes, academic success, and even career success topics.  Take advantage of the note taking and highlighting, search capabilities, copy/paste, and printing.  Users are able to utilize multiple means of access to take advantage of this new resource, using their laptop, tablet, or phone.2 WASA series

 

 

 

 

 

 

As part of our subscription to the West Academic Study Aids library, we also are providing access to their new West Academic Assessment product.  This is provided courtesy of West Academic until June 1st.  It provides access to over 5,000 customizable, formative, multiple-choice self-assessment questions that are keyed to West Academic Publishing and Foundation Press casebooks, or available by subject to work with any casebook. You can use the same login created for the West Academic Study Aids resource.

 

CALI

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction resource consists of 1,000+ interactive legal tutorials written by law professors.  There are numerous ways to find the lessons most appropriate for you – by class level, class subject, and many more.

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If you haven’t already created your account, please contact the Law Library’s Reference Team to request the authorization code at 806-742-7155 or reference.law@ttu.edu.

 

Wolters Kluwer Study Aids Library

The Wolters Kluwer Study Aid Library is a new resource that the Law Library is providing to our Law School community.  There are over 200 tiles from some of the most popular study aid series, including Examples & Explanations (E&E’s), Crunchtimes, Glannon Guides, among several others.

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Take advantage of the note taking and highlighting, full-text search, highlighting, and printing.  Users are able to utilize multiple means of access to take advantage of this new resource, using their laptop, tablet, or phone.

 

 

 

For assistance with any of these study aid resources, please contact the Reference Desk between the hours of 8:30am and 4:30pm Monday through Friday via email or phone. Or you can visit the handy Remote Access to Library Services libguide at https://libguides.law.ttu.edu/remotelibraryservices.

Email:  reference.law@ttu.edu

Phone:  806-742-7155

Science, Technology, and the Law

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The NCSTL.org project is a program of the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. United States Department of Justice located at Stetson University College of Law.  It provides a single access point for information about science, technology, and legal topics. The information has been compiled by professionals in order to provide comprehensive data on a broad range of topics.  The clearinghouse provides access to books, journals, cases, dissertations, and websites, as well as various other materials that cover topics from Accident Investigation to Voice Analysis.

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Other resources that NCSTL provides include Special Collections for specific user groups, as well as Education and Training resources.

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For more information, visit the web site or contact NCSTL.org directly at:

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More information can also be located at:

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For assistance with this or any other topic, please contact the Texas Tech Law Library at (806) 742-7155 or reference.law@ttu.edu.