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I managed to knock out two of my doctrinal classes already but am starting on Civ Pro and it just seems to not outline the same way at all. Outlines I have from 2Ls seem to leave out a lot of cases which makes sense to me in some vague way...

I'm thinking about skipping making an outline for this class and just spending that time on working through Acing Civil Procedure.

Thoughts? or should I just trust the process.

I think it depends on your professor, although the same could be said about most classes. Civ Poo is the one class I did well in last year and I relied heavily on my outline. My professor stuck pretty closely to the rules, and the test was partially multiple choice. My outline had the finer points, especially the points he mentioned and left out some of the meat of them in order to make it fast and easy to use. That helped a lot.

My civ pro outline essentially has the rules, cases discussing those roles and notes on the nuances of the rule grouped by topic. However, my civ pro is year-long and the prof has taken the approach of teaching traditional civ pro II material first (pleadings-appeals). Thus, each topic looks something like this:

I. Pleading
Rule 8
Notes on Nuances of Rule 8
Conley
Twombley
Iqbal

Rule 9
Notes on Nuances of Rule 9
Stradford

Also, my professor requires case citations to support an answer so obvious that affects how much detail I go into with the cases.

Not sure if that shed any light on the issue for you.

Thanks for both responses. It does seem very rule heavy...

The way I've been approaching it is pretty similar to what you said, MrPapagiorgio...right now I'm doing Personal Jx and just going down the list of cases and stating the issue and rule. I'll probably come back at the end and do a little summary of the process involved in determinign PJX as best I can.


So I'm guessing neither of you used outside supplements? I've been using the Glannon E &E and its been hugely helpful but it doesn't really show you how to outline the course.

I purchased Acing Civ Pro in the hopes it'd be more streamlined but havent opened it yet

jd20132013 wrote:Thanks for both responses. It does seem very rule heavy...

The way I've been approaching it is pretty similar to what you said, MrPapagiorgio...right now I'm doing Personal Jx and just going down the list of cases and stating the issue and rule. I'll probably come back at the end and do a little summary of the process involved in determinign PJX as best I can.


So I'm guessing neither of you used outside supplements? I've been using the Glannon E &E and its been hugely helpful but it doesn't really show you how to outline the course.

I purchased Acing Civ Pro in the hopes it'd be more streamlined but havent opened it yet

No I have used the E&Es for the nuances of the rule that I talked about and extra help although nothing about pleadings/answers/discovery etc is really confusing. For jurisdiction I'd imagine that the E&Es is very helpful, but I won't know until next semester. Also, my prof has used questions that were almost verbatim from the E&Es on exams in the past. And she directly recommended it in her syllabus.

In short, I recommend the E&Es and have incorporated parts of it in my outline.

I agree with ^. I don't remember exaclty how much I used the E&E for civ pro, but generally I rely on supplements, specifically E&Es a lot to fill gaps in my crappy notes and I definately used the Civ Pro one.

I've had a crappy semester, I just purchased acing civ pro. Anyone use it to try and get a B.

I used the outline and flow chart at --LinkRemoved--. Resulted in an A.

Try listening to the Freer tapes (I think Barbri also has his lectures). He makes everything seem clear and simple, and he essentially tells you how to outline and attack different types of problems. And if you have the time to read it, his hornbook is also awesome.

The main cases that explain the rule are the important thing. It's all well and good to say that an attorney's work product is not discoverable. What constitutes work product? Arguin that sort of thing on the exam is where you'll get your points.

If there is a sample pleading, argue that it's merely notice pleading and facially deficient. Then turn right around and argue that it satisfies Twombly and so forth.