Study Aids

Your own work in actively reading and briefing cases, making your own outlines, and taking practice tests is the key to law school success. Study aids can be useful when you use them as supplements to, and not substitutes for, your own critical thinking.

Don't misuse study aids.
Don't sabotage your law school success by misusing study aids. You are abusing study aids if

• You read canned briefs rather than briefing cases yourself.
• You use a commercial outline instead of making your own outline.
• You memorize the contents of a study aid and regurgitate that on an exam.

Study aids can be good learning tools when 

• You have already read and briefed the cases for class.
• You want to clarify a concept you have learned.
• You want to delve deeper into a concept.
• You want to understand the relationships among legal concepts.
• You want to look at some models to understand how to build your own outlines. 
• You want practice applying legal rules to different fact scenarios by writing out answers to practice problems.

The Academic Support Resource Library lends out study aids

• To help you choose the right study aid at the right time to accomplish your learning objectives.
• To help you learn to make intelligent choices between different study aids.
• To help you understand the difference between good and bad study aids. 

Have confidence in a study aid if

• Your professor recommends it on the syllabus or in class, or has ordered it as a supplemental text.
• The author is a current law school professor.  This shows that the author is willing to put her / his professional reputation on the line.
• The study aid is a treatise, hornbook, or explanation of the law in a respected series.

Treat a study aid with caution if

• The author is not identified.
• The author or authors are identified merely as "J.D." or "Esq." (Do you want to rely on a book written by the person graduating last in the class?)
• The front or back cover contains extravagent claims, or purports to help you ace your exams.
• The study aid provides a last-minute cramming guide.
• The study aid is "keyed" to a casebook.
• A book is perforated or 3-hole punched to allow you to tear out pages and place into your own notebook. (This encourages you to put pages from the book, rather than your own case briefs, in your class notebook. Moreover, this indicates that, no matter what the introduction says, the publisher expects you to use the study aid as a substitute for doing your own case briefs or outlines.)
• An electronic study aid allows or encourages you to paste entire sections of a book into what is supposedly your own independent outline.  

Types of Study Aids

• Treatises and hornbooks
• Large, footnoted texts by noted scholars in the field. Hornbooks are treatises in a series put out by West Publishing.
• Authoritative and scholarly.
• Use with confidence.
• Examples: Farnsworth's Contracts, LaFave's Criminal Law. 
• CALI software. 

Explanations of the law.
These are more slender volumes, often by respected scholars, aimed specifically at law students. Some of the best are essentially hornbooks with few footnotes (Concise Hornbooks, Understanding). These also include thorough explorations of narrower topics (Concepts and Insights, Turning Points, Foundations) and concise summaries of black letter law (Nutshells).

• Problem books. The best combine scholarly explanations of the law with problems (Examples & Explanations, Student Guides). Others merely offer essay, short answer, or multiple choice questions with model answers (Q&A, ExamPro, and Siegel's).
• Commercial outlines. Examples are Sum & Substance Quick Review, Gilbert's, Roadmaps, the Professor series, and Emanuel CrunchTime. Use these with caution. Some are by noted professors are good explanations of the law; but others are by hack authors and should be avoided. Use with caution.
• Flashcards. The flashcard method of asking and answering questions is very effective in memorizing rules, and can be a good way of practicing very simple hypotheticals.  Commercial flashcards can be effective when used for learning in a study group.  However, few, if any, are written by law professors, so the statements of law and explanations are not authoritative. Some study aids, such as commercial flashcards, are a valuable source of hypotheticals that can help prepare you for exams, but their answers are often superficial, and sometimes wrong.  Use with caution.
• Audiotapes, videotapes, and CDs. These usually consist of lectures by law professors. Examples are Sum & Substance and BarBri. For some students, they can provide valuable explanations and clarifications of the law. However, students who rely on audio materials often tend to organize poorly on exams and discuss irrelevant legal issues.  These are best used in the first three months of the semester; avoid using in the weeks before exams. Use with caution.
• Canned briefs.
• There are no legitimate uses of canned briefs. They are not good guides to briefing your own cases.
• It is not unusual for canned briefs to misstate the facts, include irrelevant facts, and even misstate the relevant issue and/or rule. 
• Examples: CaseNotes, High Court Case Summaries.
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• Available free to law students.
  May not have lessons in the exact subject you wish.
  Authoritative: use with confidence.

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  Software.  CALI software, available free to law students on disk or on the web, offers   You can also find law-specific outlining and flashcard-making software such as Storelaw.  If software offers premade outlines, briefs, or flashcards, look for the same indications of reliability that you would apply to a book. 
  
  

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Last updated 2008-06-20