Product Description
This set of CDs includes a 5 hour lecture on Contracts and a 10 page handout. For the Law School Legends Audio Series, we found the truly gifted law school professors most law students can only dream about – the professors who draw rave reviews not only for their scholarship, but for their ability to make the law easy to understand. We asked these select few professors to condense their courses into a single lecture. And it’s these lectures you’ll find in the… More >>
His voice has a kind of southern/Texas accent, but it is understandble. He speaks slowly–too slowly. His audio apparently followed an organizational style consistent with his books. His course organization is different than I am getting in a first year course taught using the Farnsworth casebook.
However, I have taken 3/4 of a year course already and I am truly stunned about this audio for one reason–no content. I gave up on this audio after listening to 40% of it, because it said nothing. I might as well have spent my time just reading the section headers for my casebook for all the useful information being imparted.
I know that someone is going to write this audio should be for review only, not learning the subject. I think the audio should be for review _and_ learning. This audio simply fails on both counts, for example the cases/hypos are infrequent and are so sparsely detailed that I could not follow what he was trying to say about them.
The set of CDs was a real waste of money.
Rating: 1 / 5
I almost returned the cd after reading the reviews but decided against it after getting assigned an abstract theoretical professor in contracts in a gigantic class. Knowing full well she will ask us the basic contracts exam hypos I still have to learn the main stuff. This cd set is wonderful. Epstein may not tell the funny jokes that Freer does but he certainly makes the stuff easy to learn, easy to understand – especially the definitions and what to look for in exams mentioning which fact patterns professor love to trick students with.
Easy to use cd’s that tell you which topic is being discussed. One cd gives a full outline – just print away. I think I will go ahead and buy the rest of the series. As a student, I’m on a budget but these actually do a very good job supplementing you studies. I recommend them over all the Emmanuel books out there (which I also have) b/c as a 1L you will get tired of reading and this is when you just sit back and absorb the info.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you’re a law student who is studying contracts these lectures WILL NOT help you. Epstein is a brilliant and effective scholar who does everything in his power to hide that fact from you in these lectures. The information he provides is general and too vague to be useful to effective law students. He mentions all the right principles (Offer/Acceptance, Consideration, Adhesion, ect) but with no real discussion of the rules and exceptions behind the principles that you’ll need on your exam. It feels like Epstein is teaching a mini-course for non-lawyers who only need a passing familiarity with a few contract principles.
His advice on how to take the exam is essentially just a series of reminders like, “On an exam, for Offer and Acceptance, make sure that someone is offering something and that someone is clearly accepting the offer.” -Brilliant! I stopped listening after the first CD, by then it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be helpful.
If you want a good Contract review, buy the “Sum & Substance Contracts” audio lectures by Douglas Whaley. Contracts (Sum & Substance Cd’s “Outstanding Professor”Series)
They cost more, but it is worth the money. Whaley will give you an in-depth understanding on the principles and give you straight-forward rules you can apply on your exam questions. I used his CD as I was constructing my outline and preparing for the exam. I received a 91 on my exam which was the 3rd highest grade in my class.
Do yourself a favor and pass on Epstein’s contracts.
Rating: 1 / 5
First thing. Let’s set expectations. This is a five-hour lecture. First-year contracts is a six-semester-hour course. For every hour in class, if you spend two hours studying, then that means it is supposed to take 18 hours per week, times 15 weeks to learn contracts. That’s 270 hours of preparation to sit for one or two exams. You are not going to “learn contracts” from this five-hour lecture. You should not expect that. What this lecture IS, however, is an excellent summary review of contracts. It is probably true that you might get the same information by reading the detailed table of contents from your casebook. (Except that the lecturer explains each heading and gives you a brief review of the rules). So if you are looking for an easy way to learn contracts without having to read your casebook, then I agree with the other rater, don’t waste your money. Why did I buy this? I drive 7 hours every weekend. That’s 3.5 hours of NPR every Friday evening, and 3.5 hours of law lectures every Sunday afternoon. What has this lecture done for me? Before starting my class, it gave me the lay of the land in contracts, so that when I began learning contracts, I had the perspective of how all the material fits together. That aided me with memory retention as I aquired the content. Second, during the middle of each semester, I gave it another listen, which helped me keep the perspective. Finally, I gave another listen before each final, which reinforced what I had learned. When you find yourself viewing your notes and outline in your head while the lecturer is speaking, it helps reinforce your memory recall, and it builds your confidence. I can tell you also that during my finals, as I was answering a few questions, I could hear Epstein’s Texan accent blasting in my head, and yes, it did help me recall a few of the principles. No, this is not a 5-hour short-cut to learn a year-long contracts course. Nor will you become instantly rich or fluent in Spanish. But if you do read your book and attend your class, and you have dead time to listen to this lecture, it will help.
Rating: 4 / 5