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bringyourlunch wrote:

many9 wrote:Any insights on these professors?

Contracts- Rogers
Torts- Butler
Criminal- Bridge
Civ Pro- Colangelo
Property- Tran

What about these? :

Civ Pro- Thornburg
Torts - Ryan
Prop - Forrester
Contracts - Anderson
Crim Law - Palacios

Ryan taught Torts II for the evening program last year, and Anderson taught both sections of the evening program for Contracts. I liked both of them. I especially enjoyed Anderson's teaching style and personality. He tends to ask for volunteers instead of picking people randomly for the socratic method.

You're very lucky if you get Dureus for LWRA.

Butler: A LOT of people didn't like her. I did. Speak up in class (and often) and know what you're talking about the first time she calls on you and you'll be fine. She just really wants you to participate. Be prepared to deal with some disorganization, and a little preachiness. This will only be her second year at SMU, and her second year teaching anything other than LRWA anywhere. I had her, so if she's using the same book I'm selling it, and if you want I can send you my outlines and study notes and stuff (which probably won't be helpful until closer to finals). Butler was disorganized about the way she called on people, sometime asking for volunteers, sometimes insisting she was moving to a purely Socratic method. Just go with the flow and be prepared.

Palacios: Palacios is...interesting. She lectures exclusively from powerpoint, which for the most part she'll upload to TWEN right before class, so you can follow along and print out to study from. She has, in the past, put questions up before class that you're not supposed to write down, and explain the answers after calling on people. Before she used to use these questions as her exam. This year, though, she was told by someone that people were circulating both the answers to questions in years past as well as writing down and circulating the answers to this year's questions. She flipped out and completely changed her test, acknowledging that she was making it a lot longer and harder as a sort of punishment. Not cool. She's a little flighty and moody in class, doesn't necessarily appreciate any differing political viewpoints than hers brought up in class, and makes things a little uncomfortable sometimes (especially during the rape segment of the course). All that being said, I think she's not too difficult to be in class with if you can figure out ahead of time that you just need to approach things from her side of the line. (IE - the death penalty is wrong, everyone should be paroled). She calls on people randomly based on the seating chart, but allows you to leave her a note on the podium before class if you're unprepared. I think you only get one a semester, though.

Heard (for LRWA): I don't know if anyone has her, but she's great. Very fun and easy to talk to and get information from. That being said, she's a REALLY hard (but fair) grader.

ETA: Just kidding, my Torts book just sold on Amazon. If you want to buy my books I just listed them on Amazon, but I'll pull them off. You just need to let me know soon (they've only been up for an hour and I've sold two already).

YYZ wrote:You're very lucky if you get Dureus for LWRA.

Why do you say that?

bringyourlunch wrote:

YYZ wrote:You're very lucky if you get Dureus for LWRA.

Why do you say that?

She is excellent for LWRA. A lot of people told me that I was lucky to have Dureus last year, and I completely agree. She was always willing to give help outside of class and very upbeat during class.

Okay, so I have the following:

Property Casebook (Chase, 2nd Ed.)
Contracts Casebook (Farnsworth, 7th Ed.)
Civ Pro Casebook (Crump, 5th Ed.)
Torts Casebook (Franklin, 9th Ed.)
Civ Pro Supplement to Casebook, Required (Crump, 5th Ed.)
Selections for Contracts, Required (2008 Ed.)
Contracts Treatise, Required (Farnsworth, 4th Ed.)
Contracts E&E
Civ Pro E&E
Torts E&E
Civ Pro Crunchtime
Prop Crunchtime
Prop Glannon
Acing Prop
Contracts Supp (Chirlstein, SUPER helpful)
Civ Pro Q&A (lots of notes in mine, but invaluable if you have Dorsaneo).
LRWA Textbook - Sloane
LRWA Textbook - Persuasive Writing (2nd Semester)

These are the books I have left. I do have a friend who is interested in selling her books (casebooks, I don't know what supplements she has), plus tannerrobinson and I were in the same section, so he should have those books, too. Let me know if anyone's interested, or if you want me to put you in contact with a couple people from my section who still have their books.

ETA: Legal writing books

Torts - Nelson
Property - Tran
Contracts - Rogers
Crim - Bridge

What's the word?

swilson215 wrote:Heard (for LRWA): I don't know if anyone has her, but she's great. Very fun and easy to talk to and get information from. That being said, she's a REALLY hard (but fair) grader.

Well that's good.



This is getting close to actually happening. The anxiety is setting in...

miy wrote:Torts - Nelson
Property - Tran
Contracts - Rogers
Crim - Bridge

What's the word?

swilson215 wrote:Heard (for LRWA): I don't know if anyone has her, but she's great. Very fun and easy to talk to and get information from. That being said, she's a REALLY hard (but fair) grader.

Well that's good.



This is getting close to actually happening. The anxiety is setting in...

Torts is Nelson-Butler. She goes by Butler in class. See my above post. And seriously, Heard is one of the best LRWA teachers. She really is. Don't be scared. Hahaha.

Haha ok. I don't know enough about LRWA to get too scared about it yet.

And thanks for the insight! I'll be prepared.

miy wrote:Haha ok. I don't know enough about LRWA to get too scared about it yet.

And thanks for the insight! I'll be prepared.

LRWA is horrible. Ruth Cross is no fun, and you'll hate the class by the end. It's just tedious most of the time, and then BAM! you drown in your memo (1st semester) and brief (2nd semester). But at least at the end you'll only hate the class, and not Professor Heard. Some people hate their teachers with a passion by May.

I refuse to even acknowledge my LRW teacher when I see her around school.

miy wrote:Torts - Nelson
Property - Tran
Contracts - Rogers
Crim - Bridge

What's the word?

swilson215 wrote:Heard (for LRWA): I don't know if anyone has her, but she's great. Very fun and easy to talk to and get information from. That being said, she's a REALLY hard (but fair) grader.

Well that's good.



This is getting close to actually happening. The anxiety is setting in...

Rogers is the best 1L prof at SMU. You won't like Bridge. Wait.. think this person has Colangelo for civ pro. That is another awesome one. Rogers and Colangelo where my favorite profs in law school.

alphasteve wrote:

miy wrote:Torts - Nelson
Property - Tran
Contracts - Rogers
Crim - Bridge

Rogers is the best 1L prof at SMU. You won't like Bridge. Wait.. think this person has Colangelo for civ pro. That is another awesome one. Rogers and Colangelo where my favorite profs in law school.

Yep, I've got Colangelo too. I've read good things about him so far

So I'm guessing I should be pretty happy about this schedule? Sweet.

If anyone wants to buy the casebook for colangelo, pm me. I'll give you outlines for both semesters too.

I have the torts book for Ryan (Henderson 7th), and the contracts book for Anderson (Whaley casebook 5th ed, but I already sold UCC). PM if interested. I have the Whaley contracts audio lecture, too, which I'll throw in. Really helps a lot. He explains the problems in the book just like Anderson does.

Dureus is an awesome prof. She is a fair grader, gives great feedback, and makes class fun. Loved her.

Colangelo was one of my favorite profs. He appreciates when the class is prepared. He passed out some kind of group assignment spring semester around brief time and no one did it. He was not pleased. He loves the Alien Tort Statute. Other than that, he was pretty good about helping people figure out answers on their own without being scary socratic guy. Very approachable, funny and draws silly cartoons on the board.

Anderson will make fun of you if you say something stupid, but in a very jovial way. He picked on a few of us, but I never felt bullied. He's like a fun uncle who kinda makes you nervous because he's so smart.

Only had Ryan for half the semester. Did not love her style. She would go down the rows when calling on people, so that would give you at least a little heads up, but she drilled people on silly things and was not helpful if people had questions. Her answers were more like a verbal bitch slap when people asked off-topic things, which can be good but awkward.

miy wrote:

alphasteve wrote:

miy wrote:Torts - Nelson
Property - Tran
Contracts - Rogers
Crim - Bridge

Rogers is the best 1L prof at SMU. You won't like Bridge. Wait.. think this person has Colangelo for civ pro. That is another awesome one. Rogers and Colangelo where my favorite profs in law school.

Yep, I've got Colangelo too. I've read good things about him so far

So I'm guessing I should be pretty happy about this schedule? Sweet.

If Colangelo is still using the Babcock book, I would highly recommend spending the money on the Quimbee case briefs (only available online I believe). The cases in that class are really hard, and these briefs will be a good resource.

Also, if anyone wants the Civ Pro rules book that Colangelo uses, I'll sell mine very cheap. Even if my book is one year behind the current edition, I don't think it's worth spending the extra money for the book in the bookstore. It's expensive and only refer to it on occasion in class. Just PM me.

Does anyone know if we'll need some of our books for the entire year, not just the fall semester? I was thinking about renting some of my books since that would make it $500 instead of $1500 at the bookstore, but if we need to hold onto any for the whole year then I'd rather buy those.

Hold on to your Con Law book.

hurley28 wrote:Does anyone know if we'll need some of our books for the entire year, not just the fall semester? I was thinking about renting some of my books since that would make it $500 instead of $1500 at the bookstore, but if we need to hold onto any for the whole year then I'd rather buy those.

I bet for Torts, Property, Civ Pro and Contracts you'll use the same book all year. We did last year.

Regarding renting, I think you can only markup 25% of the book, so you want to be careful about doing that. If your books aren't a brand new addition, try not to buy them in the book store. I found several of mine on half.com or amazon. You can typically find a book with very little writing in it for much less than $100. I bought one of my case books for this year for only $25, brand new.

YYZ wrote: I bet for Torts, Property, Civ Pro and Contracts you'll use the same book all year. We did last year.

Yep. The only book we didn't use for the whole year was Crim Law. I had Kahn for Con Law I and we only used the first 4 chapters of the book, but the rest of the same book is covered in Con Law II, so I kept it. (Actually, I bought it looseleaf and had it bound in two volumes at Kinkos. SO much easier to carry to class and read from.)

I noticed Black's Law Dictionary wasn't on the textbook list. Should we get this, hold off, or buy another version?

JRDallas11 wrote:I noticed Black's Law Dictionary wasn't on the textbook list. Should we get this, hold off, or buy another version?

You all may want a small dictionary or blacks for iphone. You will be looking up words as you start to read.


ETA: God, it feels so weird not going back to school. When do you all start?

alphasteve wrote:

JRDallas11 wrote:I noticed Black's Law Dictionary wasn't on the textbook list. Should we get this, hold off, or buy another version?

You all may want a small dictionary or blacks for iphone. You will be looking up words as you start to read.


ETA: God, it feels so weird not going back to school. When do you all start?

Friday the 17th.
So glad I don't have Friday classes this semester.

JRDallas11 wrote:I noticed Black's Law Dictionary wasn't on the textbook list. Should we get this, hold off, or buy another version?

I feel like I, for the most part, just looked up the defs online. It's nice to have as a ceremonial kind of thing, but I mostly used the legal dictionary hone app I bought (not black's, which was ridiculously expensive) or the internet.