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Study Aids for Law Students

Library resources for law students to help prepare for class and exams.

Check Out a Study Aid

The Law Library has a number of different types of commercial outlines, brief books, and hornbooks for you to use to prepare for exams.

Check out: The most recent editions are in the Reference Area and can be checked out for 2 weeks. Older editions (which are sometimes only a couple of years old) are in the Classified Stacks and can be checked out for weeks (usually 12 weeks for law students).

There are different kinds of study aids we collect (by different legal publishers) on a number of different common law school subjects.

Types of Study Aids in the Library

Here are some of the different kinds of study aids we have:

Nutshells

Nutshell guides are compact study guides that explain the basics of a particular area of law by noting key cases and statutes. Nutshells can be useful to read hand-in-hand with course textbooks, as they offer concise explanations of legal concepts while citing relevant cases.

Examples & Explanations

Examples & Explanations are guides aimed both for class preparation and exam review. These books explain core legal concepts and contain a series of questions at the end of each section for students to apply their knowledge in an exam-like form.

Gilbert Law Summaries

Gilbert Law Summaries are subject outlines including summaries, charts, practice questions and sample essays.

Skills & Values

The Skills & Values series is a set of books published by LexisNexis with the aim of bridging the gap between conceptual law and practiced law. These books focus on practical application of the law, and provide exercises and examples for exam preparation.

Glannon Guides

Glannon Guides teach through explanation, using hypotheticals to help clarify the application of tough concepts.

Emanuel Law Outlines

Emanuel Law Outlines are correlated to major casebooks and include explanations of the key issues, topics, and black letter law of the course. Practice multiple choice and essay questions and exam tips are also included.