What's a study group?  Should I have one?  I was in one, but it didn't work - should I try another one?

These and other questions come up for every law student.  A study group is a group of students who have decided to work together to review course material, test each other, and work on practice exams.  Whether or not you should be in one depends on several things.  First, do you study best alone or with others?  Second, how early in the year is it?  Third, is the group really ready to study, or do people tend to socialize?  Four, do you feel comfortable with the other students in the group?  Let's explore those questions one at a time.

1. Do you study best alone or with others?  If you don't like working in groups, you may find a study group intimidating.  If so, perhaps now isn't the time to become involved with one.  You should keep the option open to get into one later, though, especially around exam time.  One of the uses of a study group is to expose you to the various understandings others have about the law you are studying, and to help you to explore your own understanding of it.  This may become even more important when exam time is approaching.  The nature of law school exams, which requires you to analyze various possibilities in light of a given fact pattern, is often best served by talking with others about how they view the problem.
2. How early in the year is it?  If it's very early, you may not find a study group helpful yet.  You, and your classmates, may not have had enough class time to begin seeing patterns in the cases you are reading.  Or, you may not have had enough material to begin reviewing yet.  If the group meets and quickly disintegrates into a social meeting, members may become frustrated and leave.  Waiting a while longer to start with a study group might make sense.
3. Is the group really ready to study, or do people tend to socialize?  As noted in 2., it may be just too early to expect to get much out of (or contribute much to) a study group.  On the other hand, don't wait too long or you may miss an opportunity to become involved in a really useful means of feedback about how much you are learning.
4. Do you feel comfortable with the other students in the group?  The members of the group don't have to be, or become, best friends.  But, it's hard to work on dense, difficult material with people you don't like or can't respect.  And, if competition develops within the group, working together can quickly become unproductive.

• Set a meeting time and stick to it.  It can be weekly, or every two weeks, or whatever you all agree to, but it should be regular.  You may decide to increase your meetings as you get closer to final exams.

• Think about how many students you want to work with.  Three to five is probably optimum; many more than can become unwieldy.  You want to make sure there is sufficient time for every member of the group to fully explore his or her understanding in a given area of law that you are studying.

• What is a productive use of the group's time?  In the early stages of your group, you can use your time to review topics discussed in class and fill in gaps members of the group may have.  Make sure the time is productive.  If it isn't, people will leave feeling they've wasted precious time and be reluctant to continue.  You may want to rotate facilitating the discussion, ensuring that someone is responsible for keeping the discussion on track.

• What will you do about problems?  The group should decide how it is going to handle problems before they arise.  For example, what if one member is always late?  What if someone isn't doing the work he or she promised to do?  What if there's a conflict between group members?

• Will your group socialize?  Nearly all study groups engage in some socializing.  Many people find it necessary to spend a few minutes chatting, unwinding, commiserating about the workload, etc. before getting down to work.  That's fine but the members of the group should agree in advance on how much time to spend on this to avoid people feeling like they've not used their time productively.

• Each member of the group has to learn the material for him or herself.  The group cannot substitute for individual understanding; it can simply help members get to their own understanding.  In legal reasoning it is the process of analysis that is important, not the answer.  For that reason, your group should not assign one or two students to outline Torts, one or two to outline Property, and so forth.  Each member should do his or her own outline, with help from group members if needed.  If each student doesn't do his/her own outlines, the material will be much more difficult to learn.  If someone is having difficulty with a particular concept the group can work together on it but it really doesn't work to divide up the outlining work and then just share the results.

• Self-evaluation can be useful.  It may be helpful for the group members to evaluate periodically whether or not the study group is working for them.  If not, perhaps some changes can be made.  Sometimes, though, the mix of people just isn't right and the group needs to disband.  Accept that and move on - there may be another group that's just right for you.

• A study group can be the best way to prepare for final exams.  Most of your professors have made old exams available - either in the law library or online.  You can use these to test yourself on how well you can make use of the law and, perhaps, policy you've learned by reviewing and discussing old exam questions.  However, while talking about an exam answer can be a good use of a study group's time, it is no substitute for each student actually writing out an answer to a question and, as you get closer to exams, writing it out under exam timed conditions.  This is true because there is a huge difference between explaining something verbally where you can get cues from your listener as to how well the explanation is coming across, and writing where you must synthesize what you've learned into a coherent and relatively concise analysis.  It is usually helpful to have each student in the group work on the same question.  First, each person should read the facts and work on spotting the legal issues.  Then, identify the legal rule that applies to the issue.  Once that has been done, each student in the group should share his/her responses.  Don't be surprised if different students identify different issues, but do make note of them so that when you are working alone on preparing you can incorporate the other students' issues with yours.  Once the group agrees on the issues to be discussed, each should write a complete answer and bring it to the next study group meeting.  The members can then read and compare their answers with those of other students.

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