During the semester of each of your courses you will read about, hear, and try to make sense of an enormous amount of information.  Your understanding of that information will, for the most part, be tested on one final examination which will be the basis of your evaluation for that course.  So, how do you best prepare for such a high stakes exam?  One of the best ways to synthesize and make a large amount of information your own is by making an outline.  No, I don't mean the perfectly typed, properly indented, Roman numeral numbered outline that was probably the bane of your junior high school existence.  Rather, I mean a useful synthesis of a lot of information in, for example, Torts, Property, and/or Civil Procedure.

The value of an outline lies primarily in its preparation.  That is, the act of reviewing and condensing to written form a great deal of information is what "fixes" that material in your mind.  So, it doesn't matter if you use numbers or letters to set off your topics, or even if you (as one student did) tape the rules of Civil Procedure to the walls of your apartment, if the particular written form you choose helps you remember the material, it's a fine outline.

The function of an outline is to establish a framework of analysis for legal problems.  Your goal is to deal with two interlinked bodies of knowledge and ability that professors will try to test: 1) your knowledge of rules at a level from which you can apply those rules logically to particular problems and 2) your ability to apply the rules you have learned to new sets of facts, and to resolve the ambiguities and analyze the probable outcomes of such problems.
 
 

Can I use commercial outlines?

In a word (or two) - avoid them!  Why?  They're written by smart people, right?  Well, maybe, but how smart the outline creator is isn't the point.  In order for you to remember material, you have to work with it yourself.  Reading someone else's summary of a tricky concept isn't likely to make it any more comprehensible for you.  But, the major reason not to rely on a commercial outline is because it is generic.  That is, it gives general information about a subject.  But, you're not taking a general Civil Procedure class; you're taking Civil Procedure from Professor Subrin, or Professor Williams, or Professor Woo.  Each of them has his or her own way of teaching Civil Procedure, including different areas of emphasis and, perhaps, each even uses different cases to illustrate concepts.  No commercial outline can capture the subject with the specificity of your professor and, guess what?  It's your professor's exam you will have to take at the end of the semester.  So, you'll benefit most from preparing your own outline from your own class notes.

Outlines from other students - useful or not?

These can be useful if used as a basis for creating your own outline.  But you should not rely on these for several reasons.  First, if you use someone else's outline you will not review the material in the depth you will need for the exam.  Second, the other student may have misunderstood a concept and you will adopt that misunderstanding.  Third, working on your outline points up areas of the material you don't fully understand.  If you simply study from someone else's outline you may not realize you don't understand something, or just gloss over an explanation.  By the way, this advice goes for the hundreds of outlines that are presently available on the web - all done by people studying from different professors and texts than you.

Are outlines from other students or a commercial enterprise never useful?

No.  In fact, they can be very useful to check your own understanding, to give you a starting point, and to help explain something you don't understand.  Just use them wisely and sparingly.

How about if everyone in my study group does one outline?

Sorry, that doesn't really work either - for the same reasons it doesn't work to rely completely on another student's outline.  Going back to an earlier point, the value of an outline is primarily in the making of it.  Some people even say that once you've finished an outline, you can throw it away since you've done the work of synthesizing the material.  I wouldn't go that far - once it's done, it will still be useful for review or a quick way to check on a confusing point.  But, the bulk of your synthesizing work will be done and what remains is to continue reviewing using your outline.

So, how do I make outline - what do I include?

Outlines combine case briefs, class notes, and any outside reading you have done.  You should organize your outline by topics, not by cases.  Some professors (e.g. Professor Hackney) write a mini-outline on the board at the beginning of each class.  If your professor doesn't, one way to choose your topic headlines for the major categories is to use the titles of the casebook chapters and their sections and subsections from the table of contents of the casebook.  The information you include under each topic will come primarily from the cases and statutes in each section, but will also include material from the notes and comments in your casebook and from case discussions.

Let's use civil procedure as an illustration.  It is virtually certain that a significant part of a civil procedure final examination will test your understanding of the principal procedural checkpoints in litigation such as motions to dismiss, which may be dealt with in separate chapters in your book.  Thus, for example, your outline will include the highlights of what you have learned about the motion to dismiss.  It should refer to the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule 12(b)(6), which provides for that motion.  It should include short summaries (sometimes in just a few words, if you can distill them that far) of cases that help to define the issues involved in the question of when a court should, and should not, grant a motion to dismiss.  If there are cases in the casebook that present differing points of view on the same question - that is, two opposing decisions or majority and dissenting opinions in the same case - it would be useful to summarize the disagreement between opposing judges.

Similarly, you should note the policy bases of specific legal rules - they can sometimes be the basis for an additional argument though rarely will a policy argument alone be sufficient to answer an exam question.  Moreover, it is also prudent to note particular ideas or phrases - even ?buzz words? - that seem especially important or that appear to appeal to your professor.  A principal reason to pay particular attention to opposing decisions, majority and dissenting opinions in the same case, and particular ideas or phrases that your professor discusses is that very often controversial questions present an excellent opportunity for a professor to write an exam problem.  The fact that they are controversial helps the professor to give you an opportunity to show your understanding of the difficulties of a problem, to weigh competing views, and to present a persuasive answer.
 
 

Why shouldn't I just memorize the rules and doctrines?

Well, primarily because law school isn't about memorizing rules or doctrine that may change over time.  It is about learning how to apply the law as it exists at present to new fact patterns.  Organizing the materials requires you to determine the exact contours and focus of each doctrine.  By working with the concepts, not just reading them, you will have better comprehension and recall and will hone your analytic skills.  Writing slows the mind and deepens the analysis.  Also, attempting to comprehensively state the law that you have studied will reveal weaknesses and gaps in your knowledge.

When should I start outlining?

Generally it is best to begin an outline as soon as you have finished a chapter of the casebook, and supplement it as you finish each new chapter.  At the end of a chapter is a good time to outline because the materials in a chapter normally all relate to the same subject and provide a natural organizational unit.

How do I start my outline?

To begin, review your notes and case briefs for the chapter just finished to identify its main topics.  Your casebook?s table of contents can help in this process.  For each topic, try to gather the following information:

• Definitions of any terms of art;
• Relevant rules of law, including a description of each element that must be satisfied for the rule to apply and any differences among the jurisdictions;
• Exceptions to each rule;
• Available remedies;
• Underlying policy considerations;
• Any important historical background; and
• Any important reform proposals.

Generally, no.  However, do include a case name if it is closely connected to a well known legal doctrine (e.g. Tarasoff).  Similarly, include a fact pattern in your outline only if necessary to describe or to illustrate a rule.

What do I do after I pull together all this information? 

After gathering the necessary information from your notes and case briefs, you must synthesize and organize them.  You must determine how the topics included in the chapter relate to each other and to the topics you previously have outlined.  For example, if the chapter dealt with an intentional tort and you previously outlined another intentional tort, group them together in the outline and note their similarities and differences.  If a problem on your torts exam involves intentional wrongdoing, the possible torts will be grouped together in your outline and their unique features will have been identified.  This makes it easier to use your outline during an open book exam and to compare the elements of one intentional tort to those of another.

What else should I include?

There is no one proper outline format.  The best format depends on the course materials and on the organization that is most helpful to you - the person who is going to use this outline!  To keep the outline to a usable length, avoid including tangential materials no matter how interesting they are.  Despite the need for conciseness, however, you should include an example of how a rule applies if the rule is particularly complex or abstract.  An example can make the rule more understandable and memorable.

Do the questions my professor asked in class go into my outline?

Perhaps the most obvious sources of outline material are questions that your professor asked in class and questions posed (or answers given) in the course book.  It is only common sense that you should be careful to take notes on the professor?s questions in class, since it is that professor who makes up and grades the exam.  In fact, some of your most important notes may be those questions.  They sometimes will reveal what the professor thinks are the most interesting issues in the course, which have a way of winding up on exams.  Finally, your outline also may include ideas you have gleaned from treatises and hornbooks, as well as from law review articles that your casebook cites, that your professor refers to, or that you have found yourself.

I've finished my outline - now what?

Once you have completed your outline, you should prepare a very brief version of it.  This shortened version should be a checklist that includes just the key words from your outline.  This checklist can be useful both when you are preparing for exams and during an open book exam.  By listing all the topics in the course on two or three pages, you will have a picture of the whole forest (your outline), rather than just of the trees (individual topics).  In this way, the checklist can help you get an overview of the course and see the ways in which the different topics are interrelated.  If you are allowed to use the checklist during the exam, it can help you spot issues and answer problems thoroughly.  Review the checklist before writing an answer to a question to see whether it triggers in your mind any additional issues that must be addressed.  Given the time pressures of an exam and the anxiety you may feel, the checklist can provide an important supplement to your thinking.

Should I go back and update earlier sections of my outline?

At some point, if you have been outlining since the start of the course, a strategic question will arise.  That is, how much new work should you do on your outline?  Unfortunately, there is no set answer for that question.  All I can tell you is that at some point, you will decide that you have no more time to learn more details about the intricacies of motions for summary judgment, or what it takes to create acceptance in contract, or the elements of adverse possession in property.  At that point, your thirst for learning must turn pragmatically to a thirst for internalizing (some call this memorizing).  I am using internalizing because if you do enough reviewing of material that you have prepared, or played a meaningful part in preparing, then you will begin to absorb the material.  It will become part of your knowledge base in a way that just memorizing to regurgitate on an exam does not achieve.  Or, put another way, the fact that you prepared the material will make it much more meaningful, and thus more instructive, than trying to memorize a commercial outline done by someone else who has not taken your particular class with your particular professor. 
 

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