Gilbert Law Summaries: Criminal Law

I bought this book as part of the The First Year Program which contains a total of five outlines (Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, and Torts), plus Gilbert's Dictionary of Legal Terms and Gilbert's 8 Secrets of Top Exam Performance in Law School by Charles Whitebread. It got me through my first year of law school and I highly recommend them to all first year law students.

I have been using Gilbert's as THE black letter law book for my studies. The organization of the layout works for me. I find their exam tips to be helpful and their coverage of subject topics is detailed enough that I can remember it but I am not overwelmed. I have friends who prefer some of the other companies - it is best to shop around and find which style works for you.

I left first year criminal law a little underwhelmed. After a lifetime of Law & Order, I just assumed that a law school crimes class would overwhelm me. But when class ended - and I felt normal - I figured I must have missed something. This book put criminal law into prospective and made it a little clearer. It's pretty much in outline form, with some memory aides, and a lot of sample questions (essay and multiple choice). What I found helpful, though, was that it found a way to be concise while still be thorough. The reality is that Criminal Law class really isn't that intense. You'll cover murder, privileges, common law crimes, and perhaps some of the Model Penal Code changes. Other study aides I've seen however, are overly long and unnecessarily complex. Criminal Law isn't that complicated. And this book makes no bones about it. The bottom line is that if you are looking for a criminal law study aide, this is a fine book to go with.

This is an excellent book. It is clear and easy to read. Of all the material that we are using in my law school, this one is the most information dense. In fact, it condences information from the lectures, casebook, and handouts from class. We are told to concentrate on the casebook and what those cases illustrate, but it isn't until I get to the Gilbert Summary that I actually understand the issues clearly. Because of a slow start, I changed my angle of attack to the materials I'm using in class. The summary was assigned as reading *after* the casebook, but it's become my first reading, and in so doing, I have a grasp of the material before we even discuss it. The cases are so large a body of reading that some of the finer points tend to get lost as you are learning new ones. Don't make the mistake I did of thinking the summary was redundant and not necessary (particularly if you're getting behind on the reading, which you unvariably will from time to time), because if you don't read it and depend on your casebook only, you will miss the better and finer points under all that language. This was a big mistake for me, because it was only when I read the summary that I actually "got it". You can read tons of cases to gleen maybe a dozen ideas that Gilbert puts together in one section. I have a background in law enforcement and am trying to make the transition to practicing law, and it is very refreshing to see obscure and current changes in law illustrated clearly in this book. It is current and up to date, even with information my own professor is rusty on. This and the Casenote Legal Briefs have saved me untold times. I am so satisfied with the information in this book, and how it's layed out, that I am using it as a guide for my personal outline. Even if you're not in law school, for anyone entering related fields, this is an outstanding book.