What Supplements Will You Be Purchasing?

[philibusters]

After asking 2Ls & 3Ls and reading several "how to succeed in law school" books, I chose to order the following supplements:

Gilbert Law Summaries: Criminal Law (George E. Dix)
Gilbert Law Summaries: Torts (Marc A. Franklin)
Examples & Explanations: Torts (Joseph W. Glannon)
Examples & Explanations: Civ Pro (Joseph W. Glannon)
Emanuel: Contracts (Steven L. Emanuel)
Emanuel: Civ Pro (Steven L. Emanuel)

I know that you're not "supposed" to have more than one for each class, but people said certain things in each were better than the others.  I guess we'll see this semester!

Who says you aren't supposed to have more than 1 per class?  If there was a reason not to it would probably too expensive or not enough time to read, both excellent points.  I buy mine used, mitigating the first point and use them different study purposes, outlines to learn the rules, things like E&E to practice applying the rule like courts do, for example Emanuels for Civ Pro will be in outline form whereas the E&E is in question and answer form, those two do not overlap.  I think it will be a lot stupider to buy two supplements that overlap, but for you, the two you bought both times do not overlap. On the exam its not good enough to just know the rule, more of the points possible on the exam are based on knowing how to apply it (thus E&E would be useful), on the other hand its worse not to know the rule cause then you can't apply (thus outlines useful),
 
  I just hope you bought these used. I actually buy older editions, for example if the 7th edition came out in 2006 I buy the 6th edition that came out in 2002, some people hate that because the rules can change slightly over four years, however, even after shipping you pay about a quarter of the price, plus then you can get two supplements for the class without going broke.

[Dr. Miles]

i strongly suggest you get study aids for all the 1L courses. personally, i liked e&e for torts, civ pro, and crim. for property and Ks get gilberts and for con law get chemirinsky.

i strongly disagree w/the person who said you should wait to buy any study aids. with the exception of con law, all the 1L courses are extremely well settled and the rules are basically set in stone. what is most important to success in law school is knowing all the rules (including exceptions). regardless of how your prof teaches the class, the final exam will be a fact pattern that will require you to apply black-letter rules to the facts. policy discussions during lecture and other teching idiosyncracies will have nothing to do with the final exam.

[Reesespbcup]

tag

[slacker]

i strongly suggest you get study aids for all the 1L courses. personally, i liked e&e for torts, civ pro, and crim. for property and Ks get gilberts and for con law get chemirinsky.

i strongly disagree w/the person who said you should wait to buy any study aids. with the exception of con law, all the 1L courses are extremely well settled and the rules are basically set in stone. what is most important to success in law school is knowing all the rules (including exceptions). regardless of how your prof teaches the class, the final exam will be a fact pattern that will require you to apply black-letter rules to the facts. policy discussions during lecture and other teching idiosyncracies will have nothing to do with the final exam.

You can disagree if you want. I'll disagree with your statement that success in law schoool is knowing all the rules. It's not. It's knowing which rules are applicable to each given issue and correctly analyzing them in light of the facts. You can know all the BLL in a topic, but if you can't spot the issue and write an essay, you're not going to do well on exams.

Policy discussions have nothing to do with the final? Guess you've never seen a final with a policy question. Or added policy considerations to an issue spotter. Both of those are valid use of policy arguments, with your use of policy informed by the 'idiocynracies' of your professor.

If you have unlimited disposable income....buy away. If you'd rather be a bit more frugal in your approach, wait to see where the help is needed, and then purchase.

[Fallon]

While it's very helpful to talk to students who have had your prof, I think you can go ahead and get them now. This is especially true if you know the author of your casebook. However, if you're going to buy supplements, don't buy them at the bookstore. You'll save tons of money if you get them on half.com.
Some supplement suggestions for particular casebooks:
 1. Crim Law (Dressler): get the Lexis Understanding Series Crim Law book by Dressler. The Understanding book has some of the answers to the problems in the casebook. He's also written a book for the Black Letter Law series. It was somewhat useful.
2.  Civ Pro (Friedenthal, Miller):  Miller has Sum and Substance CDs, which are good for an overview.  I loved the Glannon Guide to Civ Pro because it had plenty of questions and quick explanations.  The E&E by Glannon is okay, but I never had time to read it.
3.  Contracts (Knapp, Crystal, Prince):  I used the E&E by Blum and Gilberts. 
4.  Property: (Dukminier):  The Lexis Understanding Series book was good. I used the E&E a bit. For Estates and Future Intersts I used Law In a Flash and Estates in Land and Future Interest: Problems and Answers Estates in Land and Future Interest: Problems and Answers by Makdisi (I loved this book, aced my exam on Est. and Future Interests because of it).
5.  Con Law (Chemerinsky):  Introduction to Law: Constitutional Law, Principles and Policies Introduction to Law: Constitutional Law, Principles and Policies by Chemerinsky.  (this is all you need along with some good practice exams).
6.  Torts: Gilberts and Glannon's E&E.

I think supplements are helpful, but I know some people only used the casebook and did fine. The supplements help you understand the rules, but you have to use practice exams to get practice applying those rules to fact patterns. Also, when you talk to 2Ls and 3Ls ask about your profs and try to get an outline from them.

 

[slacker]

i strongly suggest you get study aids for all the 1L courses. personally, i liked e&e for torts, civ pro, and crim. for property and Ks get gilberts and for con law get chemirinsky.

i strongly disagree w/the person who said you should wait to buy any study aids. with the exception of con law, all the 1L courses are extremely well settled and the rules are basically set in stone. what is most important to success in law school is knowing all the rules (including exceptions). regardless of how your prof teaches the class, the final exam will be a fact pattern that will require you to apply black-letter rules to the facts. policy discussions during lecture and other teching idiosyncracies will have nothing to do with the final exam.

You can disagree if you want. I'll disagree with your statement that success in law schoool is knowing all the rules. It's not. It's knowing which rules are applicable to each given issue and correctly analyzing them in light of the facts. You can know all the BLL in a topic, but if you can't spot the issue and write an essay, you're not going to do well on exams.

Policy discussions have nothing to do with the final? Guess you've never seen a final with a policy question. Or added policy considerations to an issue spotter. Both of those are valid use of policy arguments, with your use of policy informed by the 'idiocynracies' of your professor.

If you have unlimited disposable income....buy away. If you'd rather be a bit more frugal in your approach, wait to see where the help is needed, and then purchase.

[bamf]

tag

[skeeball]

Tag. I'll probably have at least one supplement for each class because I expect that there will be times when I'm reading the casebook and going to class and still can't figure out what's going on.

[ajlrf03]

Yeah, I bought them all used, but with no markings or highlightings. 

[esant]

You can disagree if you want. I'll disagree with your statement that success in law schoool is knowing all the rules. It's not. It's knowing which rules are applicable to each given issue and correctly analyzing them in light of the facts. You can know all the BLL in a topic, but if you can't spot the issue and write an essay, you're not going to do well on exams.

[/quote]

i totally agree.  you can easily memorize the laws but you have to be able to spot issues and apply the law for your analysis.  i used the emanuels outlines along with the barbri outlines to study and it seemed to work out really well for me.  just wait until you get to class and see what you really need help on before buying a bunch of books that will only leave you more confused