Civil Procedure

Buy this book at the beginning of the semester to help you through the class, and at the end of the semester before the exam to get ready. Final exam questions have been based off the examples in this book for years. Way, way better than the crunchtime review book. I would recommend this to every 1L taking Civ Pro.

This E & E is an excellent resource - it breaks down topics that can easily be daunting into manageable sections, and by the time you're finished with a chapter, the doctrine/rules make perfect sense. For a civil procedure course, going through these types of examples is probably your best bet in getting the rules to stick in your mind. I would recommend spending the money on this book solely for the chapters on joinder, which are exceptionally well written.

This was my favorite casebook of my 1L classes. I have no complaints about it. Things I like: Plain English writing style, use of modern cases (Internet, etc.), extensive use of hypos as questions after cases, thought-provoking and difficult questions - many of them with answers or hints. If you can do these, you'll be prepared for whatever issues appear on exams.

This book and several others are the gold standard for supplements in law school. And don't listen to what anyone says, reading these books is not somehow cheating yourself out learning information from the cases. Case-analysis is a vital skill but it's not what law school exams test you on. They test primarially how well you can synthesize information over the course of a semester and then apply that synthesized information to the analysis of a fact pattern in a four hour exam. The E & E series generally mimics this process very well, but the Glannon Civil Procedure book is heads above the rest. It's such a talisman for first year law students that anyone who advises against it should be regarded with grave suspicion.

This book is a necessity for anyone hoping to succeed in their civil procedure class. Before I read this book I couldn't tell an interpleader from and impleader, this book will even unravel the quagmire of the dreaded Erie doctrine. I could not recommend a book more strongly than I would recommend this one.