E&E Books Forum

[butterflyintraining]

I am a 1L so just starting out and realize this may sound like a ridiculous question.

How do you decide which E&E or supplemental books outside of those on the instructors syllabus are ideal for a particular course?

[soft blue]

Ask people who took the course. Failing that, your library will probably have a copy of multiple supplements for the course, pick out one or two and see which one reads the best to you. The E&Es are usually very good, in my experience.

[Pennoyer v. Meh]

If your casebook author wrote a supplement or hornbook, that'll be a good one to use. I never found the E&Es that helpful, but others did.

[Halp]

FWIW, the only E&Es I remember finding helpful were the civ pro one and to a lesser extent the con law one.

[we'rebothmenofthelaw]

I like Torts and Civ Pro. Glannon is great. Professors MAY recommend something, in which case do what they say.

[Halp]

Torts was ok, but I really think torts is simple enough that you shouldn’t need an E&E except for a few topics (Ed proximate cause).

[LSATWiz.com]

It depends on the professor. They are very helpful but can be a bit too simplistic for more academic ones.

[gregfootball2001]

I liked E&E books not for the explanations (which may or may not match what your prof is saying), but as mock questions to use during exam studying. Very useful for that.

[Bingo_Bongo]

Honestly, most review books tend to all cover the same material (what tends to be the bar tested material in the course). Of course, most professors deviate quite a bit from teaching what's bar tested. They'll stress different things than what the bar stresses, not cover certain things, and cover in great detail things you'll never need to know for the bar.

So that being said, the best review notes are your own after listening to the professor's lectures and reading the assigned readings. You can supplement those notes by going through the review book to pick up the black letter law if you weren't able to pick it up in class. A lot of times you'll find professors will get so deep in the weeds teaching all about exceptions to rules, exception to those exceptions, what minority jurisdictions do, what used to be the law in the 1700s, ect, that you leave two weeks of material without actually knowing that current status of the law in the majority of jurisdictions (often what you'll be tested on). That's where review books come in.

[soft blue]

Honestly, most review books tend to all cover the same material (what tends to be the bar tested material in the course). Of course, most professors deviate quite a bit from teaching what's bar tested. They'll stress different things than what the bar stresses, not cover certain things, and cover in great detail things you'll never need to know for the bar.

So that being said, the best review notes are your own after listening to the professor's lectures and reading the assigned readings. You can supplement those notes by going through the review book to pick up the black letter law if you weren't able to pick it up in class. A lot of times you'll find professors will get so deep in the weeds teaching all about exceptions to rules, exception to those exceptions, what minority jurisdictions do, what used to be the law in the 1700s, ect, that you leave two weeks of material without actually knowing that current status of the law in the majority of jurisdictions (often what you'll be tested on). That's where review books come in.

As an alternate perspective, I found E&E's very useful for explaining broad concepts like proximate cause or foreseeable damages. I didn't see them as a substitute for class notes at all and didn't get black-letter rules out of them. I read the E&E before the reading so I knew what the cases were dealing with -- think about it as having a smart friend explain the basics of the thing to you before you go into detail.

[SilvermanBarPrep]

Some of these books are extremely helpful. If you find yourself falling behind in a class read the reviews for any given title and if they are good enough pick one up. These books explain the law in a way that the casebooks do not. I know it's cliche to say this but there actually is a benefit to those casebooks. But that doesn't in itself mean that those books provide all that you need in a given course; oftentimes supplements are very helpful.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)