Emanuel Law Outlines
Emanuel Law Outlines are Mini-Hornbooks
In 2021 and again in 2025 we no longer believe that you should spend any time or effort using Emanuel Law Outlines. If you don’t understand the law simply get a subscription to Dean’s Law Dictionary and quickly see all the idiomatic law in one easy to access place where you can copy and paste anything you need from the massive content and thorough legal explanations.
We left up what we wrote about Emanuel products in the past but we no longer believe it to be relevant or efficient in learning the law.
Emanuel Law Outlines are Mini-Hornbooks.
If you want to impress professors, get an Emanuel Law outline. If you want to get an A, get something else.
What can we say: Emanuels are the best mini hornbooks money can buy. They are great, and other than the obvious pandering to female students, they are extremely well written. They are true works of art. Of some of the titles we examined, a few of them are amazingly similar in outline structure and content to Black Letter Law Books from West.
From our understandings and concepts of how to learn the law, to call Emanuel Law outlines a law outline is a big stretch. A law outline is not 800 pages long. Hornbooks are 1400-1500 pages, and that is why we call Emanuel law outlines mini hornbooks. They are great and they are written great but they are poor as a functional law outline. A law outline is meant to spoon-feed you the law not presented in class that you need to know, and possibly help you with the application of the law by a large bank of questions and answers. You need exam writing definitions and the law in a format that lends itself to easy memorization.
Emanuel Law Outlines are not Good for Exam Writing.
Emanuel law outlines have questions and answers, but not enough They are also written to pander to female law students as they resort to she, and her instead of he or his. It is an established and accepted fact that he or his when used in law books automatically means she or her. We also point to the fact that while they are supposed to be the #1 selling law outlines in the country, if they are written so well (and they are) and are so great as law outlines, then why do so many students get such bad grades in their exam writing?
There are few, if any, law school exam writing definitions, and with Emanuels being so big and voluminous they are not in a format to be memorized.
Emanuel Law Outlines are Really Great for Idiomatic Law
Emanuel Law outlines are perfect for learning the law you don’t understand. If, after you heard the discussions in class, and you talked to a few classmates and asked for different explanations, and you still don’t understand the law, then get an Emanuel Law outline. We recommend to anyone who finds herself (we thought we should pander to female law students as well) in that position to get an Emanuel Law outline. They are cheaper than hornbooks and great to aid in your understanding of the law that you just can’t figure out.
That being said, the below average law student may have trouble with one course during their first year of law school. The average law student will have trouble with one or two concepts in a difficult course for them during their first year, and the above-average law student might just have no problems at all with any concepts in any course.
We rate the Emanuel Law outlines highly as mini hornbooks, as they fulfill that function much better than being law outlines. We highly recommend them for that purpose.
For first-year students, they have law outline titles for torts, contracts, criminal law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and real property.