Because GSU Law has too many adorable pets for just one post…
Of course, there are more where those came from! Hang out with us at the library to study for exams and you can soak them all in. Thanks for sharing and good luck on finals!
As you may have noticed, during finals, the library displays feature the pets of GSU Law. That way, although students cannot study in the library with Fido or Whiskers by their sides, they can at least derive some comfort and amusement from these visual representations of their pets. But these pictures are too adorable to keep within the library’s confines! There was no way for us to resist sharing a few of them with the world.
So, please extend your heartfelt gratitude to your furry friends (and your friends’ furry friends) for their absolutely clutch exam assistance. Be on the look out for a sequel to this post featuring more of their adorable brethren. Until then, if you want to see more pets, you’ll have to make it in to the library. While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out some of our amazing exam-related resources, like our study aid collections and the exam archive. Good luck!
This super-deluxe mega Spotlight is a sequel to our earlier post with guidance on the premier study aids for this semester’s 1L courses. This time, we’re movin’ on up, hitting up some of those current upper-level courses and telling you which study aids are undoubtedly the very best.
As a 2L or 3L, you’ve already endured law school finals, so you basically know what to expect. This increased familiarity may have also given you a better sense of how to prepare. Perhaps you’ve decided to sharpen your outlines into a more exam-ready ‘attack’ format? Maybe you’ve pledged to work more practice exams into your study routine? If you reflect upon your previous exam experiences, you can probably find some ways to ‘level up’ your approach to finals this time around.
But do you know which study aids work well for your upper-level courses? Perhaps you’ve noticed that truly helpful study aids are a bit harder to find for these courses, especially the electives. Fewer students take them, so it’s natural that fewer study aids are published to supplement them. Moreover, quite a few of the upper-level courses are rooted in constitutional jurisprudence, which is less suited to the example-based format of many study aids than the common law courses of your 1L year.
So, if you’ve thoroughly perused the study aid shelves in the back of the library, failed to find Glannon’s trusted name on any of the pertinent spines, and skulked back to your study station empty-handed, this is the post for you. I’m going to help you choose the best study aids for your courses. That is, I’m giving you the inside scoop on which titles are the tip-top, best-in-class study aids to illuminate your courses and position you to triumph over another round of exams. Of course, in the interest of keeping this post of a manageable length, there aren’t selections for every upper-level offering, but most of the required courses (and two important electives) are here.
Constitutional Law I- Constitutional Law: Principles & Policies (Chemerinsky)
This study aid has a well-deserved reputation for being a game-changer for this challenging course. It’s an absolute classic, and we’ve sung its praises before. It offers tight, lucid descriptions of the key cases that nonetheless manage to capture many of their nuances, while also placing them in the context of SCOTUS’s evolving doctrines. I remember finding it to be a huge help when reworking my outline, but it can also work very well as a general refresher when you have trouble recalling the specifics of those early-semester cases. However, its format is designed to serve as a quick reference, not to help you learn to apply these doctrines. ConLaw exams tend to vary quite a bit from professor to professor, so that may be for the best, but that does mean it’s more important than ever be attentive to your professor’s hypotheticals. You should also see if they have any past exams available, in our archive or elsewhere. Note that this one isn’t available in the library’s online collections, so you’ll need to use it in print.
Evidence- Examples & Explanations for Evidence
In contrast to ConLaw, the rule-based structure of this course is particularly well-suited to the E&E format. The short examples allow you to gain some insight into how the FRE actually work, both in the real world and on your exam. This one also has the virtue of a writing style that makes intimidating topics quite approachable. In particular, I could appreciate how it discusses “hearsay’s appearance of difficulty to ‘outsiders’ and its relative simplicity to initiates” before proceeding to swiftly induct you into the ranks of the latter via two succinct chapters demystifying this topic.
Criminal Procedure: Investigations- Examples & Explanations for Criminal Procedure: The Constitution and the Police
It’s tricky to choose the best approach for this course, which combines ConLaw’s policy orientation with the labyrinthine analytical constructs more often associated with courses like Evidence or CivPro. Fortunately, this E&E does a solid job of addressing both of these aspects. This study aid tries to ‘simulate the Socratic classroom at its best’ and it shows. The examples are shorter than what I’ve seen in other E&Es, but they build upon one another in a way that does a good job of illuminating not just the boundaries of the applicable doctrines, but the justifications behind those boundaries.
Criminal Procedure: Adjudication– Principles of Criminal Procedure: Post-Investigation
The Concise Hornbook series is my go-to study aid for if you’re chiefly after a summary of the law. In particular, this one does a great job of tying together the many disparate topics covered in this course. A great example is the early discussion of the CrimPro’s “cornerstone objectives,” which supplies just the type of valuable context that can help make the whole course ‘click.’
Do you like these choices? Do you disagree with them? Which study aids are your top choices? Let us know in the comments!
Call it Study Aid Spotlight, tripartite edition. We’re going to take a look at not just one, but three study aids, specially chosen for the Fall 2021 1L courses.
As a 1L staring down your first finals, it pays to study up on studying. And while it’s great to have an entire publishing subcategory dedicated to aiding you in this process of studying for law school exams, it can result in a rather paralyzing proliferation of study aid options.
Fortunately, the library’s got your back. We’ve been toiling away to formulate this list of what are unquestionably the very best study aids for your fall courses, as determined by facts & logic.
Civil Procedure- Examples & Explanations
Choices don’t come easier than this. Not only does Professor Glannon (don’t worry: he’ll come up again) communicate the niceties of CivPro with clarity and wit, the example-based format keeps the focus squarely on the all-important skill of applying the law. We have an entire post extolling the virtues of this legendary study aid, so I’m not going to belabor this E&E’s exemplary qualities. Suffice it to say, this one’s a must-have.
Sum and Substance- Contracts (Audio)
More than the other 1L subjects, Contracts is starved for truly great study aids. There are plenty of solid hornbooks, but my usual application-focused standbys—E&Es and Glannon Guides—are a bit underwhelming when it comes to Contracts.
That helps Sum & Substance- Contracts stand out. Audio study aids like this one can improve your studying efficiency, since the format encourages multitasking. Here, Professor Brain does a good job of unpacking the major doctrines in a conversational style.
However, what really sets this apart from other audio study aids is the focus on applying the law. After discussing and summarizing each topic, Professor Brain includes a brief section on answering related questions on a law school exam, going over typical fact pattern and explaining how to analyze them.
Torts- Examples & Explanations
Another Glannon classic! This one features the same mix of right-to-the-point explication and irreverent humor that made its CivPro counterpart so useful. Standout chapters include “That Odious Character: The Reasonable Person,” whose examples employ Falstaff, Dogberry, and other Shakespearean characters to memorably illustrate concepts like reasonable care and the Hand formula. I can’t recommend this one strongly enough.
Do you like these choices? Do you disagree with them? Which study aids are your top choices? Let us know in the comments!
This week, we’ve got a very special “Dear My 1L Self.” You know, the classic series where Law Librarians, Upper-class Law Students, and other former 1Ls write actual, time-traveling letters to their 1L selves, giving them that priceless quality of advice that can only result from hindsight. Of course, our one true hope is that some of this advice will also helpful in the here and now, for current 1Ls. In today’s installment, we also get some fond nostalgic insights into everyone’s favorite law school from Leila Lawlor, Director of the Academic Success and LL.M. programs (and GSU J.D. holder)…
Dear 1L Leila,
I have so much to tell you, but I will try to make this somewhat quick because I know you have a lot going on—fulltime job, family, and LAW SCHOOL AT NIGHT! I know you love it at the College of Law. It may seem kind of uncool to love law school, but it’s okay by me. Here’s a secret for you, 1L Leila. You are going to end up working at the COL someday!! It really is your happy place, isn’t it?
So, 1L Leila, continue to work as hard as you feasibly can, but remember to keep life balanced! The hard work really will pay off. The COL is going to change your life. After law school graduation, you can quit your current job (the one that is not a great fit for you). You are going to be challenged intellectually in ways you can’t imagine. Here’s something that will blow you away: some of your professors will become LIFELONG friends! You didn’t see that one coming, did you? And here’s another piece of wonderful news: someday, when you work at the COL, some of your students will also become enduring friends, long past their graduation.
So, 1L self, enjoy the 1L experience. Enjoy the classmates around you. See the picture below? Several of your classmates in that picture from 1993 will still be your best friends in the whole world 28 years later! That photo was taken in the old law school building (the COL will get a new building in 2015). You are in the middle of the photo, standing up, and yep, you are pregnant. I know you think you have a lot going on in your 1L year, but you have no idea how much you will have going on when that baby arrives in your 2L year. Trust me, 1L Leila, you will get through it. You will thrive because of support you have at the College of Law. You have my word.
Note: There are NO laptop computers in the room! That’ll change soon. And the soft drink in the pink can (Tab) will soon be replaced with something called Diet Coke!
And here you are at your hooding in a couple of years, 1L Leila! See, you are going to make it through this!
Best wishes,
Leila
For this Halloween season, the Blackacre Times is resurrecting this frightful classic from Professor Parsons…
Imagine this. You’re a New York City real estate developer. You just married your second wife, an interior designer, and are looking to get out of the big city and experience some country life. Your real estate agent finds exactly the perfect house in Wind River, Connecticut (not a real place upon further inspection.) However, the current owners have no interest in selling. Strangely the day after throwing your agent out of the house, the current owners drove off of a bridge and died. You immediately swipe in and buy the Connecticut property, and move your daughter, wife, and wife’s interior designer friend Otho into the house. Your wife immediately starts to remodel the home to give it a more modern esthetic, because, that’s what she does.
However, weird things start happening. One day while eating lunch, everyone present, as if…
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Welcome to Study Aid Spotlight! This is a new, semi-regular series that will pop up at the Blackacre Times from time to time, especially as we near exam season. As the name suggests, each installment of Study Aid Spotlight will take an in-depth look at one particular study aid, discussing what it covers and why its useful. Go here if you want some study aid-related tips (alongside some choice iambs), or check out our Study Aid Finder for an easy entryway to the library’s collection. In this first installment of Study Aid Spotlight, Digital Services Librarian Gerard Fowke takes a closer look at Fischl & Paul’s classic Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams.
Here at the Blackacre Times, our ‘all-time’ most popular post is ’14 grad Hanish Patel’s convincing case for Glannon’s CivPro E&E as the ‘all-time’ #1 study aid. And it’s easy to see why the CivPro E&E might warrant such effusive praise: Professor Glannon’s masterful hypos force students to think critically about these storied doctrines, and his witty presentation makes this rather dry material quite memorable.
But I’m here to tell you that Richard Michael Fischl & Jeremy Paul’s Getting to Maybe 1 gives Glannon a run for its money.
Why? Well, it’s right there in the subtitle. ‘Law Schools Exams’ can seem awfully important, and G2M is all about ‘How to Excel ’ on these challenging and mysterious assessments. And unlike Glannon, which will only help in CivPro, G2M’s focus on exam-related skills will help you in all of your classes. Every. Single. One.
Notably, this helpfulness even encompasses those classes without a traditional law school exam. That’s because this study aid’s exam-oriented focus is really just the tip of the iceberg. Although its strategies will undoubtedly prove helpful when untangling an end-of-semester issue-spotter, that’s only because everything about law school revolves around G2M’s true topic: legal analysis.
For example, take Chapter 6, titled “Forks in the Facts.” Here, Fischl & Paul start by telling us they plan to look at a “variety of ways in which laws are structured by category” and explain the challenges of categorizing “a particular set of facts.” Then they proceed to do just that, with subchapters on oft-seen iterations of this analytical concept, such as “Rule vs. Exception,” “Categories as Elements of Legal Rules,” and “Facts on Both Sides.” For each, the authors illustrate their ideas with clear examples drawn from the casebook canon (some even involving everyone’s favorite fictional estate).
But this “categorical” habit of thought will only help you succeed on an exam because it’s an important aspect of legal analysis. And it has rarely (if ever) been given this straightforward of a treatment: the authors have cleared away the jurisprudential rabbit-holes and distilled the essence of “categorical reasoning about the law” into fewer than 20 pages.
In Maybe‘s remainder, they work similar wonders with kindred concepts like “Forks in the Law” and “Patterns of Ambiguity.” Students will walk away wishing they could stop thinking like a lawyer.
Of course, this approach means that Getting to Maybe is less of a reference work than something like the Glannon E&E. It’s not the study aid you’ll grab from the nightstand for that day-before-the-exam Erie refresher. Instead, most students will want to read G2M once or twice (preferably before the exam ‘crunch’ begins), absorb its analytical framework, and move on. This quality alone probably makes it a perpetual underdog in the study aid “World Series.” Still, few books so effectively capture the essence of what law school seeks to impart and assess. The E&Es and Nutshells of the world would do well to watch out for the weird, scrappy study aid known as Getting to Maybe.
1 I couldn’t help but to completely and utterly geek out when I noticed that Professor Paul’s faculty profile mentions that a new edition of Getting to Maybe is expected for 2021. The first (and only) edition has been out for 22 years. UPDATE: According to Carolina Academic Press (by the way of the Jones School of Law Library’s Gigi Panagotacos) the new edition won’t be out until Fall 2022. Can I even wait that long?
Earlier this month, GSU Law welcomed aboard LaVonda Reed as our new dean. As the former Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at Syracuse University, our new dean is an experienced leader and administrator. But did you know that Dean Reed is also an accomplished scholar?
One of Dean Reed’s research interests is Communications Law, especially as it relates to broadcast regulations. In Radio Regulation: The Effect of a Pro-Localism Agenda on Black Radio, she examines the effect of the FCC’s ownership regulations on radio stations serving the African-American community. Although Reed sees potential negative effects from deregulatory moves allowing for greater concentration of radio ownership, she simultaneously questions whether a pro-localism agenda limiting that concentration would, in and of itself, promote minority ownership. Instead, Reed argues that the FCC should explicitly pursue a goal of greater racial diversity in broadcast ownership alongside any such a pro-localism agenda, seeking “diversity in ownership, a diversity of sources, and ultimately, diversity in programming choices.”
Dean Reed has also written about the effect of FCC indecency regulations on political speech. In a 2010 article, she looked at the dilemma posed by “truly indecent” political advertisements, examining a potential conflict between statutes requiring broadcasters to give reasonable access to candidates for federal elective office and statutes prohibiting them from broadcasting indecent materials.
Another scholarly interest of Dean Reed’s relates to the regulation of clean energy. In Dirty Dishes, Dirty Laundry, and Windy Mills: A Framework for Regulation of Clean Energy Devices, she uses her familiarity with the telecommunications regulations to suggest that the FCC rule protecting a homeowner’s right to install satellite dishes might serve as a useful blueprint for a similar rule protecting the right to install solar panels, windmills, and other clean energy devices.
Here at the law library, we’re excited about Dean Reed’s leadership and scholarship. What about her deanship excites you? Would you like to see more blog posts discussing our faculty amazing’s scholarship? Let us know in the comments!
All the scholarship in the world doesn’t mean a thing if no one reads it or knows about it. Our institutional repository is designed to help get the word out about the exciting and innovative work of GSU Law’s faculty.
To do that, we’ve collected nearly 10,000 works, many of them made even more accessible by the inclusion of full text. And these works do reach people all over, with readers from over 200 countries downloading them 1.1 million+ times since the repository’s inception in 2010. Our most popular publication is Professor Emeritus Paul S. Milich’s definitive overview of the 2011 overhaul of Georgia’s Evidence Code.
But this may change soon, with our repository recently attracting record-breaking traffic. For example, in March alone, we had over 33,000 downloads, almost double the previous record. During that month, Professor Todres’s Human Trafficking and Film: How Popular Portrayals Influence Law and Public Perception found an especially wide readership, with 268 downloads.
As you can see, the repository is growing in importance as a vehicle for promoting our faculty’s impressive scholarship within the broader public conversation while also ensuring that it remains easy to find and accessible. Have you used this valuable resource or its counterparts at other universities and law schools? If so, what did you think? Let us know in the comments!
As finals approach, study aids are again in high demand. It’s easy to see why. Although study aids make a poor replacement for casebooks and other required materials, they can be a tremendously helpful tool for exam-prep purposes. They provide concise and highly organized reviews of topics covered in the typical law school course on the subject. The best ones also give students some valuable practice for their analytical skills. But with so many study aids out there, featuring differing formats and uses and often featuring very stark differences in quality, how can you know you’re choosing the best one?
Let’s try to answer this question while looking at a few of the best study aids for this semester’s 1L offerings. We’ll talk about what makes them worthy and how you might use them. This will also give us a nice opportunity to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the various study aid formats and series you’ll encounter.
Examples & Explanations for Property (online/physical)
The E&E series provides an accessible course overview while also foregrounding the important skill of legal analysis. It does this by structuring the entire discussion around the titular examples, a format that proves to be especially well-suited for explaining future estates and other similarly knotty concepts from Property Law. Indeed, this title’s analysis of these hypotheticals evokes the common law methods of legal analysis at the heart of this core doctrinal course. This helps to make the supplement truly feel like an extension of the classroom discussion.
The Glannon Guide to Civil Procedure (online/physical)
The author’s CivPro E&E (online/physical) is an absolute classic, but don’t sleep on this one either. Glannon Guides have a similar focus on analysis and application, but here it’s in the form of multiple-choice questions. After each one, Professor Glannon patiently explains the right (and wrong) answers in conversational prose that helps demystify this oft-convoluted area of law. The overall format works especially well for the more FRCP-driven aspects of Civil Procedure.
Principles of Contract Law (Concise Hornbook Series) (online/physical)
If you’re chiefly after a bird’s eye view of the course, there are many study aids designed with just that in mind. However, in my experience, Nutshells, Short & Happy Guides, and the like don’t provide enough detail or nuance to be truly useful. They can help you learn basic concepts and doctrines quickly, but that’s about it.
The Concise Hornbook Series provides a nice (if less concise) alternative. Like other titles in the series, Principles of Contract Law provides an overview of the major course topics. However, it keeps many of the doctrinal subtleties intact. Believe me, those subtleties will come in quite handy when asked to apply those doctrines to a novel fact pattern on an exam.
Sum & Substance: Criminal Law (online)
Audio study aids like the Sum & Substance series are a convenient resource for busy law students. It’s easy to multitask with these, to simply put them on in the background during a commute or while housekeeping, and efficiently absorb a tidy little overview of one of your law school courses.
Here, Professor Dressler endeavors to be your “tour guide” for Criminal Law, splitting the lectures into a series of audio tracks that are mostly quite short and easy to digest. His overall presentation is a bit dry but always very clear. This study aid is also a solid choice because it makes a great companion for Dressler’s well-regarded hornbook, Understanding Criminal Law (physical).
Summing It Up
My overall advice is to choose study aids that emphasize analysis and application, such as the E&E series and the Glannon Guides. This ensures that you’re practicing the skills that you will be tested on in your exams. Even if you end up opting for a hornbook-style overview, consider supplementing it with some CALI lessons since the included quizzes provide a nice opportunity to test your grasp on the material. There are high-quality lessons covering many of the topics taught in CivPro, Contracts, Criminal Law, and Property.
Thanks to your tech fee funds, Study Aids are more accessible than ever, with most of the major series available for use online through the Wolters Kluwer and West Academic platforms. These resources try to recreate the format and the feel of their print counterparts, making them a breeze to use.
What are your favorite study aids? What do you look for when you’re trying to choose one to prep for an exam? Let us know in the comments!
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