Commercial Outlines by Law Students

Commercial outlines, often created by groups of lawyers or legal researchers, provide organized discussions of major cases and ideas in various areas of law. Some of the major commercial outlines are indexed to tell you which parts of the outline correspond to which pages of the casebook you might be using in your course. As such, the outlines purport to help you summarize and understand the most important rules conveyed in the most important cases in a given subject area. They also help you understand arguments that a court might have considered and rejected in deciding a particular case. The primary advantage of commercial outlines over other study aids is that they try to present a fair amount of detail about major cases, often including a discussion of dissenting opinions. They also try to organize cases in a way that will help you understand how legal doctrines have evolved in a particular area.

Emanuel and Gilbert publish the most popular commercial outlines. You can consult with older students to find out which one is best for a particular subject (also see "Andy's Picks," below, for one expert's view on the best commercial materials). For example, many students recommend Emanuel's outline for Constitutional Law, but recommend Gilbert's outline for Property. Glance through an outline before purchasing it to make sure it has what you need and that it is organized in a way that makes sense to you. Hornbooks, Treatises, and Mini-Treatises

Hornbooks, treatises, and mini-treatises, often created by law professors, are much like undergraduate textbooks. Organized in chapters by issue, these sources seek to provide a historical discussion about how the law has evolved in a given area and to tell you the significant rules that are stated in major cases, without providing you with many of the factual details. In addition, these sources serve as good reference tools for conducting further research on legal issues. The sources tend to have many lengthy footnotes that can alert you to related cases, books, and law review articles. Their primary advantage over other study aids is that they are written in understandable prose (most of the time) and highlight important trends and scholarly insights into the area of law that you are studying. Therefore, they often serve as one of the most efficient sources from which to gain a basic understanding of the evolution of legal doctrines in a particular area. In addition, especially because of their detailed footnotes, they tend to be much more comprehensive than student outlines or commercial outlines. However, their comprehensiveness can limit their usefulness. On any given topic, they are likely to reference many cases and other reference tools that neither your casebook nor your professor will reference. Moreover, a chapter on a given topic in a treatise or hornbook often includes a lot more reading than the total amount of required class reading on the topic. On balance, your professors are more likely to recommend hornbooks and treatises than other commercial study aids because they are considered to present a more comprehensive discussion than alternative aids. There are several excellent treatises, most notably Laurence Tribe's treatise on Constitutional Law.

Audio and Video Reviews

Most law school bookstores sell audiotapes and videotapes that serve as study aids for law school courses, especially the basic first-year courses. These tapes often consist of lectures given by leading professors in the particular course you have chosen. The tapes are interesting in that they enable you to hear leading experts describe the important issues in their field in their own words. The tapes also enable you to process information without the same type of effort that you might expend in reading. For example, students sometimes listen to the audiotapes while they work out at the gym or while they are on a long airplane or automobile ride. On the other hand, these sources might be the most limited in terms of the amount of information that they can convey. Moreover, they tend to impose limitations on your ability to quickly choose the particular section that you want to hear or view at one time. Instead, for continuity purposes, many students indicate that audiotapes and videotapes are best suited for review of an entire course at the end of the semester when a student is able to derive benefit from all of the contents of the tapes at one time. For example, Arthur Miller's Civil Procedure tapes serve as an excellent end-of-course review for learning one of the more difficult first-year classes. A final consideration in the possible purchase of these sources is that they are often quite expensive and are not as likely to be consulted in your future career as would a treatise.

Other Study Aids

A number of other study aids might be available at your particular law school. For instance, some law schools offer workshops to first-year students on exam-taking skills or on the substance of particular first-year courses. Some of the organizations that offer bar review courses to recent law school graduates also offer workshops to first-year students on both exam-taking skills and the substance of first-year courses. In addition, some law schools offer students access to computer programs that have sample exam questions and answers.

In short, there are a lot of study aids from which to choose. The best advice is to plan early in the semester which study aids you will use for a particular course and then to employ them at the time that makes the most sense. Opening a treatise three days before an exam is probably useless because it has too much information to wade through in a short amount of time. However, using a treatise to supplement your reading and class notes at the end of each course topic might really help you sort through all the cases and rules. Listening to eight hours of audiotapes about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure might be useless when you have only studied one or two of the rules. However, by the end of the semester, when you have learned dozens of rules, an audiotape might provide a low-stress refresher on how the various rules fit together.

Andy Metheny, who has managed Columbia Law School's Coop for the past six years, has become an "expert" on commercial study aids. He has sold thousands of study aids and listened to students brag about the best ones and return the worst. Many students at Columbia Law School use him as a resource during the first year. His overall selections for the best first-year study aids are listed below. His top pick is listed first, followed by his second pick, and so on.