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What This Is:
 
These pages contain outlines prepared by a mediocre student at GW Law School. These are the outlines I used to study for my final exams. They may not contain complete information, they may not even contain correct information, they may not be any good to anyone at all. However, I’m posting them as an illustration of one approach to outlining and preparing for exams. (Unfortunately, formatting like bold and italics is mostly gone after the translation from OmniOutliner to Notebook. Sorry about that.)
Here’s how I’ve used these outlines:
I take my class notes in OmniOutliner, so I outline as I go (theoretically).
Toward the end of each class, I condense the class outline into a final study outline.
The OPML outline format allows you to expand or collapse sections of the outline as necessary, depending on whether you’re trying to get a global overview of your class, or whether you’re trying to work through the details of a particular topic. You can see how that works in these pages—click the triangles at the left of each “cell” to expand or collapse that section.
Before the final, I collapse the outline to just the top one or two levels — so I can just see the main headings for major topics. I print that, then in the left margin I write the page number corresponding to where the complete notes for that topic appear in the fully-expanded outline. Then I use this condensed outline as a “table of contents” for the complete outline. When I get to a question on the exam, I scan the condensed outline, find the major topic I need notes on, then flip to that spot in the complete outline. It works fairly well.
This method has worked fine for me, but as I said, I’m a mediocre student. These notes could certainly be improved; there are redundancies in places, as well as gaping holes, as where as places where things could be clearer with better organization or editing.
Why did I post my notes?
First, I did not post my notes because these notes got me A’s in all my classes. If these notes can be of assistance to you in any way, please help yourself to them, but my experience has been largely consistent with the cliched advice that every 1L hears:  you really have to make your own outlines for them to do you much good. However, I’ve also found that having one or two fairly complete outlines to use as a reference and resource makes constructing my own outlines much easier, so these files could help in that capacity. Perhaps these notes will serve that purpose for someone.
So far the notes include:
ConLaw I: This is a “skeletal” outline because the exam was closed-note, closed-book, so I was just trying to get everything on the outline as minimally as possible so it would all be in one place for memorization. This might be useful to you as a broad overview of a basic ConLaw I class based on the text: Constitutional Law: Principles and Policy Cases and Materials, 6th ed., by Jerome A. Barron, C. Thomas Dienes, Wayne McCormack, and Martin H. Redish
Download the OPML fileto import into any outliner that supports this type of file. (MS Word 2004 edition is supposed to support OPML).
conlaw1.opml
CivPro2 (Complex Joinder to Preclusion Doctrine):  These notes are from the second semester of a two-semester introduction to CivPro using Civil Procedure, 5th ed. by Stephen C. Yeazell. I may post the notes from first semester later.
Download the OPML fileto import into any outliner that supports this type of file. (MS Word 2004 edition is supposed to support OPML).
civpro2.opml