Criminal Law: Resources in Study Aid Libraries

Understanding

The Understanding series is LexisNexis's most popular study aid series and is often the first type of resource a law professor will list as a recommended title on a course syllabus. The series' purpose is to provide a comprehensive explanation of every topic a class on the subject is likely cover (each Understanding will typically contain discussion of topics beyond what your own professor will cover) at a level appropriate for a new student. To that end, the format of each section is actually quite similar to a professional-level practice treatise on the subject but the title as a whole won't go into nearly that level of detail, and the whole affair will usually end up around 350 pages in print. You will find the text itself to be quite similar in tone to your casebooks - this is a major reason for their popularity on law school syllabi - but they will use footnotes rather than reproduce the text of cases and in general will explain doctrine directly rather than "hide the ball" like a casebook would.

Mastering

The Mastering series is somewhat similar structurally to the Understanding series, as it serves as the flagship law school study aid series for the Carolina Academic Press in much the same manner as Understanding does for LexisNexis. It does, however, employ a few stylistic differences to make it a little more easily digestible. First, Mastering completely eschews footnotes or any other non-code citation (code-based subjects like Secured Transactions will cite their code, of course) in the interest of flow. This would be a bad choice for a normal treatise, but since it's assumed the book will be used as a companion for a casebook in a law school course, this isn't such a problem in context since the authority you'll need to cite will come from the casebook anyhow. Second, each chapter opens with a "Roadmap" that briefly lays out the core concepts to be covered. Finally, each chapter ends with a "Checkpoint" that restates the major points in a half a page, The final product manages to be more concise than Understanding without streamlining the subject to the point one would see in the Short & Happy or Acing series, for instance.

Skills & Values

The Skills & Values series starts to move away from traditional doctrine-based legal instruction and selects a few major concepts within a subject to expand on with real-world, practical examples rather than the kind of abstraction one finds in a casebook or traditional study aid. To that end, the doctrinal discussion, while present, will be quite a bit shorter than in other series and will be followed by a very involved hypothetical through which students are intended to work as if they were attorneys: general guidance is offered on what types of documents to draft at which stages, but the expectation is that this work will be assigned as a class exercise. Even absent this kind of formal exercise - clearly the intent of the series - Skills & Values can be helpful in understanding how the legal doctrine you're studying translates into actual work in a way that isn't always clear from traditional resources.

Questions & Answers

The Questions & Answers series is, quite simply, a collection of several hundred law-school-exam-style multiple choice questions and their answers and explanations. There is no explanation of any given topic itself, so the series is meant to be a supplement to your other study aids: head to Questions & Answers to practice some exam questions once you feel like you have a handle on a topic from other sources. Questions & Answers is not the only multiple choice question bank on the study aid market and the fact that it strictly focuses on one topic at a time rather than blending multiple issues like actual exam questions do makes the series not quite as helpful as it probably could be, but the series is simply unbeatable for the sheer number of questions each entry provides, and grinding out sample questions remains the best way to actually prepare for a law school exam once basic comprehension is achieved.

Examples & Explanations

The Examples & Explanations study aid series is the baseline comprehensive subject-based study guide series on the Aspen Learning Library platform. In this sense, it is structurally similar to a professional practice guide in the way it straightforwardly explains the law and provides footnote citation, but the titles tend to be longer than even the Understanding series, regularly clocking in at 500 pages or more. This is because Examples & Explanations fleshes out its content with numerous explanatory hypotheticals that track with how a topic is likely to be approached in a law school classroom. This makes it an excellent series to focus on if your main immediate concern is getting cold-called in class. All in all, Examples & Explanations is likely the most in-depth study aid series available on either of these platforms so students are well-advised to check it out.

Casenote Legal Briefs

Casenote can be considered a modern attempt at recreating the casebook-specific study guides of the old Hornbook era: this series is keyed to specific major casebooks and provides briefs to all the cases contained therein. For instance, the Constitutional Law entry is keyed to Chemerinsky, and the Torts entry is for Prosser and Wade. Obviously, if your class happens to use the right casebook the accompanying Casenote Legal Briefs will prove an invaluable companion throughout the term, but even beyond that they can prove helpful: other casebooks will often use the same cases as they really are the landmarks - this is especially true in classes based around US Supreme Court jurisprudence like Con Law and Crim Pro - and the briefs themselves can serve as a nice template for your own case briefs in the class.

Emanuel Law Outlines

The Emanuel series differs from other classic study aids in that its focus is entirely on preparation for a traditional end-of-term law school exam, which will most likely be the assessment method for any course of a topic an Emanuel guide exists to cover. They tend to be enormous - in the 700-page range - because they restate their content multiple times and in multiple formats. Each book will open with a "short version" of the guide where everything is framed as one- or two-sentence sections of the whole outline, as a quick reference. The full study guide is then presented in a multi-hundred-page outline format, and finally sample questions and discussions of what topics are usually tested on exams and how they're approached. This series is enormously popular, and remains the industry leader for exam preparation.

Friedman's Practice Series

This series, authored and edited by Joseph W. Friedman, is a law school exam question compilation. In drafting each title in the series, Prof. Friedman sought real exams from professors at top law schools, reproduced their commentary on each multiple choice or essay question he uses, and also relays general testing advice from high-performing law students. Prof. Friedman offers basically no commentary or explanation of his own, instead choosing to make his series a sort of nationwide exam bank. Highly recommended, as this kind of direct access to real exams can be difficult to come by.

In Other Words

The In Other Words series is a fairly standard study aid series in terms of content, but is extremely noteworthy in that it is produced entirely in audio and video recordings. If you don't particularly care to read another book or want to take advantage of the convenience of technology in your review, In Other Words is the best thing available to you for free through these libraries. Unfortunately, In Other Words is rather sparse; each title only compiles about 40 or 50 minutes of total recorded lecture, not nearly enough to serve as a primary study aid. As a free introduction or supplement, it can be helpful, but other, better AV study aid series exist (though they must be purchased by the student).

Emanuel CrunchTime

As the name suggests, the Emanuel CrunchTime series is a truncated version of the Emanuel guides, designed to distill an entire course on a given subject into as succinct a discussion as possible. They are fairly similar to the Emanuel guide on the same subject but will be substantially shorter, usually around 200 pages. Highly recommended for last-minute test preparation, and their presence on this electronic study aid platform is welcome for that reason, as print copies tend to be in high demand around finals.

Inside: What Matters and Why

The Inside series is a more recent addition to the crowded field of generalized law school study aids, and unfortunately it doesn't do much to distinguish itself in the face of its more established competitors. It does, however, promote a more relaxed and conversational, even humorous, tone which some students might find helpful for longer and more intense study sessions. While the library probably would not recommend this series if it had to pick one generalized study aid for a given topic, it is welcome in this database as an option worth checking out to see if the style appeals to you.