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So I got a huge bag of old books from a friend who graduated last year (so the books are 4 years old dating back to her 1L). She told me they were all legit and should be useable during my 1L, but I am worried some may be outdated. Because of this I decided to talk to some of the law students I know and buy a supplement for each class so I have something new in case the ones I was given were of no use (plus the casebooks obviously). The majority of the people I know if law school recommended the following:

For Torts: Understanding Torts by Diamond
For Criminal Law: Understanding Criminal Law by Dressler
For Civ Pro: Civi Pro E&E by Glannon (The newest 2008 edition I think)
For Contracts: Not sure yet, so you tell me.
For Legal Writing: Also have no idea and have not seen a majority vote.

Basically, help me decide what is the best supplement to have for Contracts and for Legal Writing.

Man I wish this forum had a sticky post titled something like COMMON 0L QUESTIONS with lots of discussion about supplements.... I don't think that has ever been discussed on these forums

For Contracts, get Chirelstein's hornbook "Concepts and Case Analysis in the Law of Contracts" (blue little book with a ship on the cover). I also used the E&E a little bit, although I had Chirelstein for my contracts prof so I didn't ned to stray too much from the hornbook:)
For Con Law, Chemerinsky's hornbook is widely acknowledged to be the best, altho it's quite large so more of a textbook than a hornbook.
For Torts, I actually used Abraham's "Forms and Functions of Tort Law" (which my prof recommended). I thought it was pretty good.
Your Crim and Civ Pro books were also what I used.
For Legal Writing, I didn't really use a "supplement" (we had the Edwards book as our assigned book for class), but I recommend Volokh's Academic Legal Writing, which I used for the law review writing competition. It's a really fantastic book with tips on everything from structure to common redundant phrases to avoid.
Obviously if your prof recommends something, go with that. But these books are sort of the ones that are repeated throughout the TLS Forums and were widely used at CLS by the students. I also recommend, if you want to be a bit crazy, looking thru some of the treatises your school library probably has on reserves (e.g., Prosser and Keeton for Torts, and Tribe for Con Law). These are pretty intense, but I think the Tribe treatise especially helped me get some deeper ideas for my exam.

I like your picks/"gifts". If I had to do it again I would have read the corresponding
sections of the understanding books, then read the cases. Personally, the
understanding books gives me extra ammo for the essays and I only know of a couple of people
that used them in my section.

So for K's I would recommend the understanding book by Ferriell.
I wouldn't buy a writing supplement; just get the required books.

Then towards the end hit the library and check out the lexis Q/A books (for multiple choice)
and the E/E books (skip the torts e/e) and siegel books for essays.

Good luck

Seriously go to the sticky. I spent HOURS digging through all of the recommendations on the sticky. Why do you get another thread on this topic?



IT IS ALL THERE. NOTHING CAN BE ADDED TO THAT.

If so I can't afford them after picking out everything I wanted from the sticky

evilxs wrote:Seriously go to the sticky. I spent HOURS digging through all of the recommendations on the sticky. Why do you get another thread on this topic?



IT IS ALL THERE. NOTHING CAN BE ADDED TO THAT.

If so I can't afford them after picking out everything I wanted from the sticky

Oh my god. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, TLS.

Come on, you lol'd.

I just can't see what makes the OP so special that another thread was needed for extensively covered topics.

I own a couple of forums and Search Noob! is what we tell them. Except here you don't even have to search. The sticky is credited gold.