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There is no one answer. Get your hands on several outlines from older students and see how they handled it. You can't just ignore facts. It's not that you have to remember facts from certain cases, but Facts beg Law - you can't spot issues unless you can read some facts and figure out what legal issues need to be decided, which leads you to the appropriate rule. For me, in my outlines I'd have a brief fact summary to remind me. E.g., case where kids tricycle hit guys chair. You can have all the black letter law memorized and it won't help you if you can't recognize what facts trigger that law. Good luck.

I was (and still am) a terrible note taker, but that's because I know I have a knack for remembering things, so it never held me back. I mention that only to suggest you have to tailor your outlining method to your personal way of doing things.

Depends on how well you internalize the material, what your prof's expectations/approach is, and the nature of the class. I don't have it figured out completely but I am starting to get it. Some profs teach theory and you have to apply it to cases on your own. Other profs assign cases and use Socratic to draw out the theory. Other classes are pretty straight forward read, memorize, regurgitate. LRW is just an unjustifiable timesuck designed to humiliate and infuriate.

I will say that Torts is making me cave as far as book-briefing goes. The emphasis that my prof puts on knowing the opinions and the justifications makes it hard not to highlight.

Here is my unconventional approach:

(1) Skim the cases in class and take notes on an old outline (I only took notes for two 1L classes). Don't brief, don't waste hours each night on the casebook.

(2) Carefully work though the E&Es/supplements at home and on the weekends, tracking your professor's syllabus.

(3) In November, put the casebook, E&Es, and your notes out on the table and start creating an outline from scratch. Here's where the learning really happens.

(4) Continually revise your outline, delving into the cases for more nuance each time. Your understanding of the cases will be MUCH better at this point in the semester. Your goal is to really see how everything works and relates to other topics in the course.

Here's my approach that was met with success:

1. Create a case-chart, which included: Facts, issues, black letter law, and the court's reasoning.
2. Read the E&E section that corresponded to the class's syllabus.
3. Read/power-skim the assigned reading.
4. Add notes about the E&E and the class reading into the case-chart.
5. Add class notes into the case-chart.
6. Rinse & repeat for every class.

My "case-chart" was essentially my comprehensive outline for the class; it doubled as both a chart with cases, and an outline of the general rules of law that each class covered.

Then as November rolled around, I started to assemble a shorter "attack outline," which included only BLL. Then I'd use that attack outline as my only resource when I wrote out responses to practice problems in the E&E.

But for full disclosure purposes, I rarely aced any cold-calls. I never took down procedural posture, nor did I ever write down anything about concurring/dissenting opinions, so I bombed any question that asked about those.

So yes, I was not "smart" from a class discussion perspective, but I managed to do well on the class's final.

1. Get an old outline
2. Update it with your notes that you feel are important for the outline.

That's it.

TTRansfer wrote:1. Get an old outline
2. Update it with your notes that you feel are important for the outline.

That's it.

Seriously. Everything else is striver nonsense

FKASunny wrote:

TTRansfer wrote:1. Get an old outline
2. Update it with your notes that you feel are important for the outline.

That's it.

Seriously. Everything else is striver nonsense

This works for some.

B.B. Homemaker wrote:

FKASunny wrote:

TTRansfer wrote:1. Get an old outline
2. Update it with your notes that you feel are important for the outline.

That's it.

Seriously. Everything else is striver nonsense

This works for some.

If one is the type that needs to actually write the outline to learn it, just re-write the old outline.