Anki for the law state examination: learning definitions on the iPhone

In law studies, the belief persists that you just need to have enough definitions "at hand." Then you sit a five-hour exam, know the definition of taking (Wegnahme) by heart, and still don't know where it belongs in the opinion. Flashcards are useful in law studies. They just aren't what gets you through the exam.

This page shows you what Anki cards are good for in law studies, which ready-made decks exist, how you learn with checkst, and why research on legal study material in particular carries a warning.

The exam in numbers

The First Legal Examination consists of the state compulsory-subject examination and the university specialization-area examination; the overall grade weights the state part at 70 percent and the specialization area at 30 percent. How many written exams you sit depends on the state: in North Rhine-Westphalia it is six five-hour exams according to the University of Bonn, in Schleswig-Holstein seven.

And the statistics are unforgiving. According to LTO's analysis of BfJ figures, in 2024, 27.4 percent of all candidates nationwide failed the state compulsory-subject examination. A "very good" grade was achieved by 39 people. A "full satisfactory" or better was reached by 19.57 percent of all candidates.

What cards are good for

Four uses are documented:

• Definitions. The classic. The Passau learning offering VisiLex also names flashcards precisely for this.
• Examination schemata. Yes, but with caution. The Kiel study guide recommends deriving schemata from the statutory requirements and warns against wanting to memorize every schema by heart.
• Doctrinal disputes with arguments. A Reddit experience report describes cards for the important doctrinal disputes, along with their arguments.
• Review alongside case training. Jurcoach separates three things: building understanding, applying it in the opinion, and reviewing with Anki. This order is the point.

And one rule that comes up repeatedly on r/recht: as little text per card as possible. Spread long content across several cards. A card with seven bullet points on mistake of permissible justification is never learned cleanly.

Ready-made decks

• Jurcoach: free Anki decks on general criminal law, such as elements of an offense, unlawfulness, culpability and attempt.
• Basiskarten Jura: explicitly supplied as Anki files and PDFs.
• Alpmann Schmidt and Hemmer: available as printed cards and digitally, Alpmann via eBib and a connection with Repetico, Hemmer as eCards. We found no official Anki deck for either of them.

Community decks come up on Reddit again and again. Whether they are identical to Alpmann or Hemmer cannot be inferred from that.

Your workflow with checkst

1. Import the basics. Get the Jurcoach decks or Basiskarten as an Anki file and open them in checkst. That gives you the foundation without typing every definition yourself.

2. Your own cards from the lecture handout. Open your university review lecture handout or your own summaries as a PDF in split view: lecture handout on the left, card editor on the right. Photographed a note from the textbook? Text recognition pulls the text from the photo. For definitions, cloze deletion pays off: the whole definition on the card, with only the decisive feature hidden.

3. Whole schemata, not cherry-picks. In 2018, Neumann and Buckley found for legal examination material not only better recall through retrieval practice, but also retrieval-induced forgetting: if you practice only part of a set of related questions, you recall the rest worse. If you learn the elements of § 823 para. 1 BGB, learn all of them, not just the two that give you trouble.

4. Use FSRS honestly. checkst schedules your reviews with FSRS. The Anki manual's default is 90 percent target retention; the manual advises against going above 97 percent. If you didn't know the definition word-for-word well enough for the exam, press "Again." "Hard" counts as known.

5. Study group with your AG. If you have a private study group, create a study group in checkst, share your doctrinal-dispute cards and invite via link or QR code. The leaderboard doesn't replace quizzing each other, but it shows who is actually reviewing.

Example cards

Two-part answers like § 433 are ideal for cards: you notice right away when the second half is missing. And that is exactly what is missing in the exam.

What the research says

Cooper and Gurung surveyed law students: self-testing, self-quizzing and application-oriented learning were positively associated with performance, while pure rule memorization without application was negatively associated. In 2011, Karpicke and Blunt showed with science texts that retrieval practice outperformed concept mapping after one week, including on questions that linked several concepts. A controlled study of Anki in German exam preparation does not exist.

Limitations

• You don't write exams with cards. Corrected practice exams, such as those the Kiel university review offers weekly, are not replaced by an app.
• No publisher cards. You don't get Alpmann and Hemmer cards in checkst.
• The statute text remains mandatory. Cards with paragraphs are only as good as your work with the law. When something changes, you have to adjust your cards yourself.
• Apple only. iPhone and iPad, no Android, no web app.