How to Make Progress by Reading Every Day
When you need to make progress every day, it’s harder to read than when you only need to read occasionally. The key to being able to remember legal concepts for the long-term versus quickly forgetting them is to work with your schedule, not fight it. Start by identifying a regular time each day to read something, say just after you drink your morning coffee or during your bedtime routine, and commit to reading just one short section of a legal document during that time period. The key here is to keep the amount of time you read short, so you train your brain to associate reading legal documents with a quick win rather than with tedium.
Start with a document at the level of your current comfort. For example, you could start with just one paragraph from a typical non-disclosure agreement or one clause from a typical lease agreement. Both of those types of agreements use repetitive language from one agreement to the next, and are easy to find. Read through the paragraph or clause once to get the gist of it, then go back through and highlight or underline every verb, the words that suggest action or responsibility, and replace each verb with its most simple alternative by writing it on a piece of paper off to the side of your computer. This process will help you see whether the responsibility seems strong or weak. If the replacement verb, read in context, seems different than you originally interpreted it, make a note of why, in most cases, the reason is that the verb wasn’t precise. Jot a note to that effect in the margin so you’ll remember it as you read other agreements.
A big mistake you can make here is to soldier through even when you don’t understand something. In most cases, doing that buries the confusion rather than clearing it up, so you end up with an uncertain understanding that may not serve you well when you need it. Instead, stop reading the instant you encounter something you don’t understand, close the document, and for the rest of your scheduled time, look up only that term in a plain English legal dictionary or glossary. Try to come up with a one-sentence definition in plain English, then reopen the document and see if the definition makes the meaning clear. If not, put a question mark in the margin and go on to the next day, in many cases, the answer will be obvious when you approach it fresh the next day without taking any additional steps.
Continue reading like this, varying the type of document slightly from one day to the next, but sticking to documents at the beginner level. You might read a provision about how to make payments under a service contract one evening, a provision disclaiming warranties under a purchase agreement the next evening, and a provision about notice under an employment agreement the evening after that. That will help you see the repetitive sections, indemnification sections, limitation of liability sections, and so on, without asking your brain to absorb too many new concepts at once. After about a week or ten days, you’ll start to see the patterns emerging on their own, so reading what once seemed like incomprehensible gibberish will start to feel like reading building blocks instead.
Be sure to keep your reading time boxed to fifteen or twenty minutes, so you don’t burn out. When your time is up, stop, even if you’re in the middle of a sentence. The suspense will help you come back the next day instead of dreading it. After a month or so, you’ll find that you’re able to recognize standard provisions when you see them, and get a feel for where the landmines are likely to be. You’ll also find it much easier to tackle longer or more complicated documents when you need to. At some point, the process will shift from something you force yourself to do to something you can hardly avoid.