Outlining but not caring about cases? Forum

[Zannie1986]

Hey guys,
I was wondering if anyone had any writing outline tips for a Contracts Professor who straight up says, after, of course, teaching case all semester, he doesn't care about the cases, unless the situations are incredibly analogous, and to instead focus on the Restatements and UCC in our exams. i feel like my outline's now going to be like:
RTT 1 says this
RTT 2 says this
RTT3...
I mean, if this is what he wants why don't I just buy a restatements of contracts book and we already use UCC, so just bring these two books to the exam? I'm joking, but I'm also frustrated, because I felt like we didn't focus on the restatements as much as he suddenly wants us to and it just feels wrong to not focus or write about what we've been studying all year, even if just to articulate a sentence-long rule per case . Does anyone have any good ideas on how to structure a restatement/UCC-heavy outline?

[rejectmaster]

mine is just like that as well but i basically just took the syllabus (which mentions the parts of the Res. and the UCC) and used that as a skeleton. and i guess the restatements are just a catalog of case law without case names so it ends up being the same thing.. maybe? good luck in any event

[Gatriel]

Our Contracts prof is the same way. Could care less about case names. All we need to know from the exam is 2-207 and notes we took in class.

For example, he doesn't want us in the exam going like

"Based upon precedent from Wilhoite v. Beck blah blah blah"

rather

The first issue at bar is whether blah blah blah blah. Rule statement goes here. etc. etc.

[evilxs]

Are you allowed to bring your outline into the exam?

[random5483]

Other than in Civil Procedure most classes likely do not require you to remember case names. Throwing in case names when the fact pattern is similar to the case might be helpful, but overall most of my profs have made it clear that we need to know the rules from the cases and not the cases themselves (Exception: Civ Pro).

Know the rules. Studying the cases won't help much at this stage. The cases were meant to help us learn how to analyze the rules and give us a frame of reference. Rules without a reference point can be ambiguous. At this stage study the rules, do not study the cases.

[Bosque]

BEHOLD, YOUR ONE TRUE SAVIOR.