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I have one week under my belt. Should I start outlining now or wait until the end of week 2 and begin over the weekend?

LOL

I never started outlining more than 6 weeks before exams in law school.

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Frank wrote:2L, here.

Didn't start outlining until, maybe, 2 weeks before exams.

haha maybe I'm jumping the gun!

What could you possibly outline after one week? Wait until halfway through the semester, minimum.

Start a bit slower and build to the end of the semester. You don't want to burn out early on. Always remember - 3 hours of studying early in the term is the equivalent (in terms of productivity) to one hour of studying later in the semester.

In short, calm down and save some ammo.

2L. I always outlined about 2/3 of the way through the course, but I came to realize that I always ended up struggling on finishing the last of my 3 outlines in time.

So this semester I'm going to start around halfway through the class.

The professors I've talked to said mid-october.

This relieves me a little bit. After studying contracts for a week its difficult to see the proper organization and how everything fits together. Hopefully this will clear up with time!

I'll probably start making a rough outline sometime in october. Thanks everyone.

I am already outlining. I am just going to outline as I go. It is not like its entirely hard to know what is important and what is not.

2L here...if you're just starting your outline now, you're boned. Quit and go to trade school. HTH.

I started outlining already as well..I did intentional torts as we went through them and then polished the whole section up once we finished. The only thing I *dont* do is outline the section before going through it in class (using supplements)--no point reinforcing ideas that your prof doesnt agree with.

I have found it works--I met with somebody at the school [academic success type person] to go over what I have so far and was told its good..I actually feel much better about this than waiting it out. I feel like if I wait till the end, everything will evaporate. Right now, I am constantly revising it so its like Im studying the material throughout the semester, which will help me memorize.

I dont know, I guess it depends on the individual...and time will tell how I do, but I prefer this

Interesting goosey. I think I'll do that at the end of every section. I'm doing intentional torts- battery right now so once I'm done I think I'll outline. Sound about right?

My professors have stuff organized pretty well, so about a month in I think I will start.

pasteurizedmilk wrote:What could you possibly outline after one week?

goosey wrote:I did intentional torts as we went through them and then polished the whole section up once we finished.

I've always outlined after each "section" in a course was completed, and that's worked well for me (Top 5%, LR, BIGLAW secure). Having front-loaded the semester, I generally coast through the last 4 to 6 weeks, and spend the reading period before exams relaxing rather than frantically working to complete my outlines.

Give it at least a month of just doing what you're told before you start messing with outlining/supplements/etc.

I am looking to start toward the end of this week, once we finish up major "sections" in each course. In torts, we will be done with intentional torts, and defenses to them, within about a week. So that seems like a perfect interlude to get all my things together onto one document. As for my K's class, he starts with about 2 weeks of intro concepts and principles that seem all over the place. It isn't until about 3 weeks in that we get into a specific topic area, so I think I will hold off outlining there. Civ pro is like torts, in that a section will be over soon, so I can outline it.

My confusion is, what exactly does outlining entail? Please correct if I'm going about it wrong, but I was going to include on my outline a shortened version of the important points from my notes, the case names with short description and of course the principles/rules that follow from them, and also include some info from supplements I've been reading that go along with the class material. Finally, I've been trying to identify different "forks" in the material based on how different states or experts interpret certain ideas, and I will put those into the outline as well. Is there anything I am missing as to what I should be doing? Thanks.

Why do people act like its such a waste to start outlining early? It seems prudent to me. How enigmatic can it really be? Sure I haven't learned about how to validly accept a contract, but that's no reason why I can't organize and outline all the information I have about the offer.

Anonymous Loser wrote:
I've always outlined after each "section" in a course was completed

My Torts professor gave us the same advice last week, suggesting we use the holiday weekend to begin outlining because we've completed the section on Intentional Torts. It's week 4 here.

There's no harm in outlining early, even from the beginning. Some of the guides on law school success on here even suggest to do just that. The whole point of outlining is creating and editing it, looking at it as often as possible to memorize as much as you can. If you put the basic stuff that you just learned in there now, who cares, you can take it out later, leave it, do whatever you want to it.

jdubb990 wrote:There's no harm in outlining early, even from the beginning. Some of the guides on law school success on here even suggest to do just that. The whole point of outlining is creating and editing it, looking at it as often as possible to memorize as much as you can. If you put the basic stuff that you just learned in there now, who cares, you can take it out later, leave it, do whatever you want to it.

If it worked for *Teddy, it'll work for me.

lawschooliseasy wrote:

jdubb990 wrote:There's no harm in outlining early, even from the beginning. Some of the guides on law school success on here even suggest to do just that. The whole point of outlining is creating and editing it, looking at it as often as possible to memorize as much as you can. If you put the basic stuff that you just learned in there now, who cares, you can take it out later, leave it, do whatever you want to it.

If it worked for FDR, it'll work for me.

Um, presidential fail?

Edit: Thats more like it. My man Teddy

For me contracts seems difficult to outline as of now. We are working on remedies at the moment. I outlined some intentional tort stuff.

I had all of my classes outlined before day one, all of my supplements read TWICE (and noted with page markers, of course), and I am on my 6th read through of GTM. I'm only on my second read of the casebooks though, I feel like I'm being a bit of a slacker.

savagedm wrote:I had all of my classes outlined before day one, all of my supplements read TWICE (and noted with page markers, of course), and I am on my 6th read through of GTM. I'm only on my second read of the casebooks though, I feel like I'm being a bit of a slacker.

The sad thing is...there probably is a guy like this out there somewhere.

jdubb990 wrote:

savagedm wrote:I had all of my classes outlined before day one, all of my supplements read TWICE (and noted with page markers, of course), and I am on my 6th read through of GTM. I'm only on my second read of the casebooks though, I feel like I'm being a b
it of a slacker.

The sad thing is...there probably is a guy like this out there somewhere.

Yeah, I imagine so. Ugh, I need a life to survive.