Civ Pro - Any tips or advice for finals prep? Forum

[zeth006]

Now that we're reaching the point at which people are starting practice tests and assembling outlines, I'd like to know what everyone else is doing, did, or would do to prep for civil procedure.


I'm scared of this class. Some days I go in rocking the material because the concepts/rules were stinkin' easy to understand. Other days, I only somewhat understand what's going on. Whether I understand the material is a hit or a miss and I've only recently learned that the E&E is a Godsend in terms of helping me understand the nitty gritty details and exceptions and how the rules operate. What are people doing for outlines? I've seen people post up links to flow charts and I even dug up an old outline from my school's database and I got a couple of few cues from another TLS poster's outline.

Would you guys suggest I stop reading cases and just start reading only the canned briefs and the supplements? I even bought Glannon's 2009 supplement to go with the E&E.

Any thoughts? Any suggestions on how to format my outline for this class? Should I not obsess too much about cases?

[BruceWayne]

Fellow 1L here; your avatar is awesome! I'm not sure what casebook you're using for Civ Pro, but my teacher uses the Friedenthal one. I bought the Friedenthal/Kane/Miller hornobook. At least for me, I'd go so far as to say it's a must own if you are using the Friedenthal casebook. It's absolutely incredible and it's broken up just like the casebook.

[zeth006]

Fellow 1L here; your avatar is awesome! I'm not sure what casebook you're using for Civ Pro, but my teacher uses the Friedenthal one. I bought the Friedenthal/Kane/Miller hornobook. At least for me, I'd go so far as to say it's a must own if you are using the Friedenthal casebook. It's absolutely incredible and it's broken up just like the casebook.

Nope, no hornbook for my casebook. I just have canned case briefs keyed to the casebook.



Nice username and avatar.

[chicagolaw2013]

Now that we're reaching the point at which people are starting practice tests and assembling outlines, I'd like to know what everyone else is doing, did, or would do to prep for civil procedure.


I'm scared of this class. Some days I go in rocking the material because the concepts/rules were stinkin' easy to understand. Other days, I only somewhat understand what's going on. Whether I understand the material is a hit or a miss and I've only recently learned that the E&E is a Godsend in terms of helping me understand the nitty gritty details and exceptions and how the rules operate. What are people doing for outlines? I've seen people post up links to flow charts and I even dug up an old outline from my school's database and I got a couple of few cues from another TLS poster's outline.

Would you guys suggest I stop reading cases and just start reading only the canned briefs and the supplements? I even bought Glannon's 2009 supplement to go with the E&E.

Any thoughts? Any suggestions on how to format my outline for this class? Should I not obsess too much about cases?

Every prof is different, I know, but my Civ Pro prof keeps hammering home that we should probably know the names of the bigger cases (Twombly, Iqbal, Int'l Shoe, etc.). That said, I don't think he'll necessarily take points off for not, say, putting the name Int'l Shoe in our exam answers (i.e. if I just put "minimum contacts doctrine" and flesh it out with some facts, he'll obvi know I'm referencing Int'l Shoe). But I don't want to be the one who doesn't and find out later that he was docking points for case names.

This dude is a TREAT, to say the least.

[GeePee]

I think a lot of the time in Civ Pro, you shouldn't go by how you feel in class, but rather how you feel with a bit of perspective afterward. My professor, for example, likes to try to question the doctrine involved to get us thinking about how procedure might be deficient, or how the Court's opinions are not as honest in their reasoning as they probably should be. This confusion is therefore by design. However, if you take a step back afterward and can understand the law and also understand why your professor maybe didn't want you to be so comfortable with that law, then you're getting somewhere.