| What do you put in your outlines? Do you include charts or other material you didn’t create? During my first semester, I did it all myself and then came in to watch classmates open huge, detailed outlines with charts and stuff that obviously came from an outside source. I sort of thought that wasn’t allowed, but maybe I’m wrong. What do you all do? Where do you find the info that goes into your outline, besides just your own notes, case briefs and recollections? When it’s every classmate for his/herself, how do you compete against someone who chooses to use the best sources he/she can find?? How do you know that what is in your personally created outline is fully accurate and complete?
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re: anon #1, an ATTACK outline, I like it. Makes me feel like a soldier of the law… ready to do battle with my … um, laptop and floppy drive… but seriously though, I think it’s the way to go.
oh, and source-wise – i tend to use outlines of people who actually had my professor (e.g. from the school outline bank) or commerical outlines by the casebook author (e.g. dukeminier wrote the gilbert’s for property, and it’s verbatim from the casebook – VERY helpful).
I use a sort of copyright notion of fair use – if I ’substantially contributed” to the info (e.g. by reformatting, rewording, etc), then i consider it fine to include. sometimes having helpful graphics in there is nice.
i do both a massive detailed outline w. everything and an attack outline along the lines of what LL is saying. to be able to do the attack outline, you really need to know your stuff (to distill it). it takes FOREVER but it has been worth it for me gradewise.
[...] PT-LawMom [...]
Yeah, my professors were very specific. They were either the bring anything at all camp, or else they were your work only outlines. I don’t remember any in betweens. That being said, I always built my own outlines since it was that process that really helped me learn.
whatever works, IMHO. Though I’ve learned through experience to write my outlines as full-bodied prose, in the same language I’ll use on the exam rather than the lists of elements and explanations you’ll find in most commercial outlines. If I’ve studied properly I won’t have any trouble remembering the concepts. I use my outline to (1) make sure I don’t leave anything out and (2) give me a succinct, pre-synthesized statement of law so I’m not sitting there for 10 minutes trying to figure out the right way to say something I already know.
Hey! This is the first time I’m reading your blog – great stuff! Everyone outlines differently, but what works best for me is to start with someone else’s outline and edit it until it’s my own. Our school has an outline bank where you can get other students’ old outlines – do you have one too? I usually start with one of those as a template, then edit it, add my own stuff, and supplement it with info from the commercial outlines (Gilbert’s, etc.).
I know people that add a lot of outside information to their outlines, but I wonder how helpful that really is. The point of an outline, for me, is to review all the course information and come up with the best way to organize it- that overall view is what helps me the most. And the process of culling through my book and class notes to fill in the outline in the most concise yet comprehensive way is what teaches me the class material- everything usually falls into place by the time I’m done.
But I’m different from many people in that my goal is for the outline to be less than 10 pages. I want the major themes, cases, and holdings to help find the basic answer to an exam question and then I “ctrl + f” through my notes to get more details if needed. A massive outline just doesn’t help me.
most professors find the “create it yourself” hard to police and enforce. so all my classes are either “bring in anything” (except something that breathes or connects to the web) or “totally closed book.”
outlines you create are superior because they include only that which isn’t already in your brain
The only way my outlines worked for me was to make them all myself. I sometimes made my own charts, but rarely. Personally, I don’t think there’s much value in the outside sources, so I don’t think they have an advantage: what matters is what is in your own brain, synthesizing the material. Most of our professors specified outlines you created or helped create (if any were allowed at all) so it depends on what the professor allows.