If asked, law professors often discourage use of commercial study aids (“…the work of the devil…” cautions Daniel J. Wilson, Assistant Director Academic Achievement Program at University of Denver College of Law) – nevertheless, you will find your law school bookstore contains hundreds of volumes of course summaries, sets of flashcards, shelves filled with “canned” briefs of cases, and dozens of hardbound hornbooks written by distinguished legal scholars. 

To buy or not to buy?  The first thing you need to remember is that no study aid can provide you with a shortcut to the most important lessons of law school.  Study aids are designed to do one thing – aid – to assist law students in their rigorous study.  You are not in law school simply to learn laws – you are in law school to develop the skills associated with using those laws to resolve complicated problems.  The only way you will master the skills – at your personal best level – is by practicing the skills.

Study aids that assist you in comprehending some of the difficult twists and turns of the law can be helpful; those that provide hundreds of hypothetical questions can be very helpful.

Here are a few links to commercial study aids – to give you an idea of what is out there.  Read the descriptions carefully, with your study objectives in mind. 

One of the best study aids on “the market” is not on the market at all – it’s free!  Using a password provided by your law school, visit this gold mine of instruction, quizzes, multiple choice tests, and simulated essay examinations: CALI – Computer Assisted Legal Instruction.

This whole series provides all you need as a supplement or study aid for all of the first-year classes (and many more). You will find a wealth of issue-specific questions followed by detailed explanations of how the law is used to resolve problems, simple to complex. One of the better aspects of this entire series is the emphasis on understanding the subtleties and dealing with the "gray areas" of the law. Some students find that reading about a topic in one of these volumes before reading the casebook helps them comprehend the cases better as they read and brief for class.