+100 for comparison and organization. IMHO TCR is to find someone who had the same professor and did well and then use their outline to structure your own. There's no reason to go through the motions of creating a template when you can just delete all of their substantive text. Fill in the white space as the semester progresses, consulting the original outline -- and any others you come across -- to see whether you've missed anything. Later in the semester, take practice exams with classmates you like, think are intelligent, and trust to take practice exams seriously. When you review your answers, listen to what your classmates say and refine your outline further.runthetrap1990 wrote:I can confirm this. I had an old CALI's outline for Hillman Contracts First Semester and got pretty boned in his class. Any and all classes that I made my own outline in I ended up doing very well in. Who knew.deepseapartners wrote:Outline banks can be very useful, but remember that nearly all of the outlines you'll see, especially in the vetted outline banks like the joint BLSA/LALSA/NALSA bank, were written by students either from scratch or by taking an old outline and deleting everything except the skeleton. It's extremely unlikely you will do well, particularly as a 1L, unless you work very hard on your own to understand the morass of information in your casebooks and class notes, and the best way for most people to do this is through writing their own outlines.smiles123 wrote:What clubs have outline banks? I didn't know this was something that existed until a few days ago when a 2L mentioned it. But now I think I'll be kicking myself come exam time if I don't join one.
That being said, old outlines are certainly helpful as a point of comparison and organization.
I'll also add that I think attack outlines are a total waste of time -- assuming your professor hasn't imposed a page limit. It sucks to wade through 20 pages of paper, but it sucks more not to have policy arguments and one- or two-sentence case summaries at your fingertips. And if you do your due diligence and take practice exams, you'll end up becoming so familiar with your outline that you won't have any trouble locating your section on specific performance or whatever.
