WahooLaw24 wrote:PepperJack wrote:persia1921 wrote:What is the general consensus on buying supplements. Is waiting to here from the prof the best option? Did you find supplements more helpful or redundant in general?
Waiting for professor. You might have a professor who wrote one. Professors may even recommend one.
I agree with this, with the one caveat being I don't see how you could go wrong with the Glannon E&E for Civ Pro. Get the latest edition -- even if it costs $50 or a bit more, I think it's very much worth it.
Overall, though, I wasn't big on supplements. The Civ Pro one I mentioned was great, and Chemerinsky for Con Law is also incredibly thorough and yet easy to understand. Other than that, I don't know that anything I picked up really helped me that much.
I agree with waiting generally and asking your peer advisors if they have recommendations or supplements you can look through to see which style you prefer. However, if you're looking to pick something up early, there is a Lowe supplement for Crim Law that may be worth picking up since he is one of the casebook authors (and as far as I know all the crim classes use the casebook written by the UVA Law professors). I also found the Contracts E&E very helpful, especially for understanding the UCC. I also thought the "Acing Civil Procedure" and "Acing Criminal Law" were unbelievably helpful - they don't go into as much detail as the Glannon or Chemerinksy books, but for basic understanding and applying the rules, they are superb. I also second buying the latest versions of the supplements - I had the previous edition of the Glannon book and I was missing some important recent cases.
In terms of commercial outlines (like Gilbert and Emmanuel), one reason that might be worth waiting is that some of the them have tables in them that explain where things are that are tied to specific casebooks (like pp. 847-930 in the casebook are in section 3 of the outline) - so if you don't know what casebook your professor will be using it might be worth waiting. It depends how much you like commercial outlines, I used them a lot first semester but not second semester.
I also got a Kaplan 1L Edge Program collection of outlines for free a couple of weeks into the semester and I think I paid $20 for a Barbri collection of first year outlines. So if you aren't using them to supplement your reading right away, then you can wait and get outlines for super cheap. There is also a supplement sale as you get closer to 1L finals, so if you want to read the casebook all year and then get supplements to help with outlines, then you can get a deal when PILA starts doing fundraising.
I found supplements really helpful early on when I hadn't yet figured out how to read cases. They also were kind of like a safety blanket in terms of me feeling like I was doing something, even if they were somewhat redundant. I think this led me to overpurchase supplements, so keep in mind you can always buy more supplements but they are all final sale at our bookstore.
Lastly, I think some of the most helpful materials in terms of studying for the exams are the outlines on the outline bank, so also keep in mind that you will have those as resources, so two supplements, the Barbri and Kaplan outlines, and two old outlines for class is simply too much material to get through so plan ahead.
