Ray's J.D. (Juris Doctor)

3L: Required Materials - My Thoughts and Opinions

School Website (eJuris):

A Note:

NWCULaw migrated from Blackboard to eJuris. This move took place in 2013, and the eJuris site is a very professional system. NWCULaw staff continue to tweak how the site is used, and it just keeps getting better.

Casebooks:

Casebooks are those huge and expensive books that I really did not have a lot of faith in from the beginning. During my 2L year, I made a promise to myself to NOT use them if at all possible - this hurt me because I did buy them.

The reason why I decided to NOT use the casebooks is that I researched the buyback prices of the books which I had JUST purchased, and the buyback price was a waste of time to even try.

That being what it is, I made the conscious decision to NOT use the casebooks - and I passed 2L, so take it for what it is worth. Rather than using the casebooks, I would highly suggest that you use the Wikipedia pages that I outline on the page called, "Study Law???"

From that page, I give you links to everything that you need to be familiar with - and Wikipedia does a fantastic job of having the best information available for us - it is truly excellent - use it!

Commercial Outlines:

I use the Gilbert's Law Summary's for all of my courses. The school recommends either Emanuel's or Gilbert's depending on the course, but I prefer the Gilbert's across the board.

The primary reason is that the Gilbert's use Sub Section Numbers, and it is simple to be talking with someone with another version of the book, and the sub section number should be the same - no need to care about page numbers, which seem to change between editions of various books.

I did note that the Constitutional Law Gilbert's that I have does NOT use the same system of the sub sections, and I did not like that - but it probably changes so infrequently, that it doesn't matter.

You need to find which Commercial Outlines YOU like to work with the best, and I would stick to whatever one that is - for me, the Gilbert's are the ones I prefer.

Here are the links to the Gilbert's:

Gilbert's Civil Procedure
Gilbert's Constitutional Law
Gilbert's Corporations
Gilbert's Evidence

Fleming Course Lectures:

Professor Fleming doesn't give me a big bag of cash for any sort of endorsement, but I would always be open to a payout if it came my way! The point here is that I really liked the Fleming course audio lectures that I had purchased for 2L. In fact, I edit the audio, make a new MP3 from it and use it at an enhanced (faster) rate of speed - this allows me to bang through an entire subject in one day!

Do you NEED the Fleming lectures? No, you do not - but you had better be very motivated with using the free Wikipedia materials that I link to - and you could absolutely do so! And perform very well at that!

For me, though, the Fleming lectures really hit hard on the most vital points.

The funny thing is that Professor Fleming is an instructor at NWCULaw as well, and we have access to lectures from him - and I still buy the lecture notes and audio so that I can work with them on my plan of attack, and I guess that is a ringing endorsement of how well I like Professor Fleming's materials.

I will not be purchasing my Fleming lectures right away for 3L because of the plan of attack, which I will add as another page.

For 3L, I really hope to actually follow my own game plan as I have yet to be able to do it so far... and it is such a great plan of attack too! If I get it done for 3L, I fully expect my GPA to climb a bit before 4L!

Case Brief Books:

I hope you know my position on these by now! A case brief book is a book of just that, case briefs. For NWCULaw, the way in which we have to format the case brief forces us to rewrite whatever case brief book we would use, and you cannot just copy this stuff - that is plagiarism, it is wrong, and it will easily get you tossed out of school on an ethical violation... besides, the simple solution to the point is to cite your sources, but for a case brief, you should not even have to, and here is why...

You need to (traditionally) read the case from the casebook (the big expensive waste of money one), but Google is your friend. You can Google any of the really important cases, and get all of the background data that would make for an even better brief than what a case brief book will give you.

With that in mind, I made a promise to myself for 3L that I will not be using case brief books either!

Here is why... When I look in the case brief book, I typically find that there is too little information for me to have a frigging clue as to what they are talking about... so I have to research every single case that I brief so that I can fill in all those blanks as to what happened, and why anyone sued anyone else!

In doing that, I find all that I need to know - for free - to adequately brief a case without having a case brief book in the first place - save more money!!!

For 1L, get case brief books, for 2L, maybe do that again - by the time you hit 3L, you might not need them at all. I will make some sort of note about that as I go forward, but I believe that I "get it" by now, and I think I can pull together a good enough case brief from the research I can do online, for free.

Check out the 3L Game Plan Page!