The Law of Torts

I bought this E&E just before finals to prepare for the exam. It was definitely worth the price. It helped clear up any uncertainties I had and gave me a "big picture" perspective of the semester. Each topic is broken into a chapter that gives an overall explanation, and at the end of each chapter there are 10+ questions that reinforce/give additional information about the process of applying the topic to a fact pattern. There are also exam tips and 2-3 long essay samples with sample answers.This book is very helpful in easily explaining a concept and explaining how things relate to each other. I wish I had ordered the book at the beginning of the semester to read each chapter as we were discussing the topic in class. I feel it would have been very helpful.This is a great tool for a study aid, but it can not be used to ace an exam without going to class or taking good class notes. It only explains majority opinions on topics, and often professors will cover both majority/minority opinions and their applications to be tested on them. Additionally, although it does touch on the Restatement, it does not go into much detail about the Restatement approach for many topics, so if you professor focuses on that you will need additional instruction.I used this book in conjunction with the Crunchtime: Torts. I found that combined, they were a great prep tool and plan to use both again for other classes. With that said, the Torts E&E was far more helpful than any other E&E. I would not recommend an E&E for every class, and think you should look at the book in the library before you purchase it to see if it would be a decent supplement for your class.

The content itself seems okay. However, this review is for the organization of the book in its entirety, and the way the example questions are laid out.I am comparing this to the contracts E & E, which I though was laid out great. The sections in the table of contents here are not clear on what tort area of the law the section pertains to, it just has cleaver titles like"interlude: pleading a personal injury case" or "The duty element." Then you have to look under each chapter to see where you want to go, and those titles are not much better. They need to organize this book by sections (like understanding torts does), with sections on nuisance, products liability, strict liability, battery, etc. that are clearly labeled. Also, I cannot find where nuisance is at, I think they left it out of the book but its a big area of tort law.The questions at the end of the chapter are organized by the type of question, instead of letting you figure out the exact problem you are trying to be tested on. This seems like a pretty stupid thing to do. For example, in the product liability defenses chapeter, there are questions under headers that say "use and misuse," then a question right underneath it that says, "what defense should the defendant use?" . . . duhh, the defense of misuse because the publisher put this question under the title of misuse. Dumb right? So, although the questions and answers are helpful, it would be much more helpful not to have these headers so I can figure out how to analyze the facts more and which defense would be possible.

I run a community on Facebook called Perfectly Paralegal which is a group for paralegals and other legal professionals, as you can imagine, we have a lot of students in legal programs. This text book was critical for my own studies and also the studies of many of our paralegal student members as well.

If you are going to use this book for pre-1L prep, I can help you. Go get a pencil. Then take the pencil and stab yourself in the eye every time you want to go to law school. Your life will be much better, even if you are a slow learner and have to keep stabbing yourself. Really, I'll bet a blind man at a concession stand isn't $150,000 in debt and looking forward to unemployment.But if you don't follow my advice, then use this book to prep for 1L. Come November all your classmates will be reading this trying futilely to get an edge on their classmates. If you read it in July that will save some time that you can waste going to class, listening to your idiot professor, making outlines and all the other stupid wasteful stuff that 1Ls do.

Only problem I have with this book is that it goes over a lot of stuff you most likely won't be tested on your final exam like contribution and indemnity amount.No chapter on defamation either.However, if you just need the basics for Tort, this is your book. Glannon does a great job organizing and going through the elements of both intentional torts and negligence (the big one which exams will always have).Unlike other crap E and E, this book will only go over what you need to know and not start briefing you on cases to exemplify a subject. Whatever cases are presented in this book will be summarized succinctly and will likely just be an example to a particular law.

I found this book very easy and useful for review, but not as interesting to read as the Contracts E & E. This book has really great information and advice for exam taking, and I really liked the timed sample exams (with sample answers) in the back of the book. The other review books I have used just had short, issue-based hypos but this book had those as well as the longer exams. The only problem with the practice exams is that they include all of the topics in the book, and it is unlikely that you will have covered them all in one semester of torts. Even so, you can definitely work around it and this book helps you put all of what you've learned into context.