In most video game stores is a wealth of literature on how to play and win games – player’s guides, this sort of thing – that only the lamest and least imaginative kids would actually pay for. Indeed, what’s the point of buying a video game and playing it if you want some guide to play the game for you? The purpose of a video game is to explore and be challenged, be frustrated, and figure the game out. Outlining your course material might seem intrinsically less entertaining then a video game, but the same sentiment applies: the entire challenge of the course, the way to learn the material, is to actively engage yourself in it and to create a lawyer’s mentality by summarizing cases and outlining the substance of courses. It would seem then that commercial study aids would be for only the losers among law students, those who were afraid to study, afraid to actually try at a profession that ostensibly requires you to try a hell of a lot.

However, assuming that you are going to summarize your own cases and outline your own course material, checking out a commercial outline can be useful. Yes, it is no substitute for paying close attention to your professor, to his take on the topics and his emphasis, but such notes can give you a birds-eye view of the material, and help you redact and shape your own notes. Assuming you are putting in the work and not seeking shortcuts, it can reinforce and intensify your understanding of the material. In such cases, commercial aids might be useful, and are worth looking into.

You will be able to get a better sense of all of the material, to be able to spot issues amidst a set of facts – and such skills, if you learn them, are useful from wherever you learn them. It is a recourse worth considering. Not shortcuts, but reinforcement.