Ultimately, law school is about information generation and management.

Reading your cases and synthesizing a hold in your briefs, and going to class and taking notes are creating information.

Putting that information in a broader context is managing your information. The outline is the final repository for the information you generated during the semester. If you've read your cases, briefed them, and gone to class and taken notes, you have more than enough raw material for your outline.

Also, the process of outlining is studying for the final. By putting the information in a coherent form you are clarifying your understanding of the course. You will have the opportunity to gain possession of outlines from prior years. By all means get them! But, the outline itself isn't really all that useful. It is the process of outlining that helps you learn the material.

An algorithm is a list of steps to accomplish a certain task. I promise you, that if you have the raw material, following these simple steps will result in a good outline.

1. Copy your table of contents
2. Under the main headings from the book insert the names of the cases.
3. Under the case names, write the issue, the rule, and the hold for each case.
4. Summurize the facts of the case to jar your memory in a sentence or two.
5. Look over your notes during steps 2 and 3. Add anything important you think the teacher was searching for. Did the teacher direct your attention to any passage in the opinion? If she did write it down.
6. Include anything else you feel you need to, but K.I.S.S. is the rule.

Before you can follow the above steps, you've got to cross the first bridge of outling by deciding when to start. You can't start the first day because you don't have any information to organize. And you can't start one week before exams because at that time you'll have too much information and too little time to organize it properly.

Somewhere in the middle of the semester when you feel you have enough information you should begin your outline. Don't worry about the people you see in the library pounding away on outlines day in and day out. Making a seventy page security blanket ain't gonna help come exam time.

This example isn't very practical for pre-law students. But for students who are stumped about outlining, it may help. I've decided not to edit this section out, even though it is protracted and hard to follow. With that disclaimer in mind, we will use property as our subject matter and use the case, Ghen v. Rich which appears in the property section of the disk.

For this example, we pretend you have your property case book, your property brief notebook, your class notes, and and other suplemental matierals like a horn book,a Nutshell, and a Gilberts outline.

Also (oh luck!) you've got a wrinkled and faded copy of last year's property outline for your class section.

You get out your brief book and lo, you can't find the brief you want! You remember that you were sick the day you read Ghen v. Rich. You didn't feel like briefing, so you didn't. Good for you. But now, you're paying for it. You open the property book and type in the table of contents.

You finish typing the table of contents. Wow, you think we've covered almost 400 pages and I'm only on page 66! You're beat. This outlining is killing you. And You've still got to read for tommorow. Alright, you're gonna finish at least one section.

You are on the section "wild animals."

You briefly skim the copy of the outline that your friend gave you. It's from last year; the professor's changed the book. But you find what your looking for. The old outline has the case under the heading of "Local Custom and Law." It looks like this:

You remember that rule was based on local custom, but you don't remember that being the focus of the discussion in class. You pull out your notes. They are really sloppy. Yep, in class the professor quized someone and it doesn't seem that custom had anything to do with the discussion.

You check Gilberts.

Well, this coupled with your notes seems to be saying a couple of things. First that there is a general rule of possession. The first to find has the greatest rights except the real owner. And second, the rule for possession with wild animals is that one must first have physical control over the animal. And third, this rule of possession of wild animals has occasionally been modified by the courts to allow mortal wounding of an animal to constitute legal possession.

You're ready to fill in the table of contents you previously typed in.

Then we fill in the section on Ghen, from our notes and from briefly skimming the case. We find some language that we like that states the general rule of possession, as stated above. And also we confirm our notes. Indeed the court has reached a decision that modifies the general rule on possession. Before the case in your casebook you find some language that you like that states the general rule of possession as it applies to wild animals. This confirms what you read in Gilbert so you feel a little more comfortable.

After reviewing your notes, Gilberts, the crappy outline your friend gave you, and your book, you started to really get a feel for the case.

You're excited that you starting to understand this. And you move on to the next case in your book. It's about gaining legal possession by purchase.

"I've never been this tired," you think as you finish. You've outlined two cases. That brings your outline up to the section on Inheritance. It's 10:30. You're significant other is asleep in the other room. You crack open your contracts book. It's gonna be a very long night.

Outlining is tedious, frustrating, and time-consuming but it is not difficult. In the sections above, I laid out an algorithm that won't fail you in constructing your outlines.

Also, you may have noticed how much time you lost because you failed to brief the case. If you had two solid weeks to finish an outline you'd get an A in every class. But unfortunately, your outlining time will be a scare commidity. You'll squeeze in a little work here and a little work there, but you'll also have to keep up in your classes. It's hard to juggle everything at once and the stress is enormous.