Preface

Thanks for buying this book.

Here are some of its special features:

• “Casebook Correlation Chart” – This chart, located just after this Preface, correlates each section of our Outline with the pages covering the same topic in the five leading Torts casebooks.
• “Capsule Summary” – This is a 110-page summary of the key concepts of the law of Torts, specially designed for use in the last week or so before your final exam.
• “Quiz Yourself” – At the end of nearly every chapter we give you short-answer questions so that you can exercise your analytical muscles. There are nearly 100 of these questions. Most are from the Law in a Flash Torts title; some are from a book we publish called Steve Emanuel’s First-Year Questions and Answers. (Also, we’ve got other questions, in a multiple-choice format, at p. 529.)
• “Exam Tips” – These alert you to the issues that repeatedly pop up on actual Torts exams, and the factual patterns commonly used to test those issues. We created these Tips by looking at literally hundreds of multiple-choice and essay questions asked by law professors and bar examiners. You’d be surprised at how predictable the issues and fact-patterns chosen by profs really are!
• Essay Q&As – These are actual past Harvard Law School Torts essay questions, together with our suggested model answers. You’ll be surprised to see how many subtle issues can be embedded into a relatively short fact pattern.

I intend for you to use this book both throughout the semester and for exam preparation. Here are some suggestions about how to use it:^[1]

1. During the semester, use the book in preparing each night for the next day’s class. To do this, first read your casebook. Then, use the Casebook Correlation Chart to get an idea of what part of the outline to read. Reading the outline will give you a sense of how the particular cases you’ve just read in your casebook fit into the overall structure of the subject. You may want to use a yellow highlighter to mark key portions of the Emanuel Law Outline (the “Emanuel”).

2. If you make your own outline for the course, use the Emanuel to give you a structure, and to supply black letter principles. You may want to rely especially on the Capsule Summary for this purpose. You are hereby authorized to copy small portions of the Emanuel into your own outline, provided that your outline will be used only by you or your study group, and provided that you are the owner of the Emanuel.

[1].  The suggestions below relate only to this book. I don’t talk about taking or reviewing class notes, using hornbooks or other study aids, joining a study group, or anything else. This doesn’t mean I don’t think these other steps are important — it’s just that in this Preface I’ve chosen to focus on how I think you can use this outline.