This week's 1L Life Hack

Hornbooks

Hornbooks summarize and explain the law in a specific area. They are extremely helpful in breaking down complex legal analysis and terms in to more understandable concepts. Reading these books will help you to understand the legal analysis required for midterms, practice exams, and the final exams.

Professors may suggest a hornbook for their course in the course syllabus, by mentioning it in class, or by your request. Sometime those hornbooks are written by the same author as the casebook, this may be helpful in understanding the more difficult issues in the casebook. Usually the hornbook that the professor suggests follows their course closely and is overall very helpful for understanding the course topics.

Most hornbooks can be purchased in the bookstore on the first floor of school.  Cyndi can also make recommendations for which hornbook to use for most of the Professors. If you aren’t partial to the bookstore, they can also be found online. You may be able to find used editions as well.

If you aren’t interested in purchasing the book, you can check one out from the circulation desk in the library. The library has a wide array of hornbooks available, including the understanding series, the Examples & Explanations series, and the In a Nutshell series. For more comprehensive explanations, the library also has the Aspen Student Treatise series. These books are available to check out for three hours at a time; there are new and older editions of most of the hornbooks in the library.

If you are having trouble starting or organizing your outline there are several hornbook series concentrating on outlining. These may give you the thought organization you needed to help you begin or finish your outline. An additional resource that is similar to a hornbook is the In a Flash series.  These are flash cards that have hypos on one side and the answers on the other side.  The answer side explains the reasoning for the answer, much like the MBE style multiple choice questions that will come up on almost all of your exams.