Study Aids

Study aids, which generally focus on particular areas of law that correspond to the subjects of law school courses, can help law students gain a basic understanding of legal principles and clarify complex concepts. They can be used both when preparing for class and when studying for exams, as supplements to the assigned reading of a course.

The GW Law Library provides access to the Aspen Learning Library, which includes the Examples & Explanations series and CrunchTime study guides; and the LexisNexis Digital Library, which includes the Understanding and Q&A series. When prompted to login, use your GW Law email address and password.

Print study aids may be borrowed from the Reserve Collection at the Law Library's Circulation/Reserve Desk for up to 2 hours. Older editions may be found in the Law Library stacks. For more study aids in the Law Library's collection, please consult our Study Aids guide.

To locate additional study aids for a particular legal topic, please consult the appropriate legal research guide.

Examples & Explanations (E&Es) provide an overview of legal principles, along with hypothetical legal questions followed by detailed explanations.

Understanding Series: each title in the series is a concise hornbook covering fundamental concepts for legal subjects.

Nutshells present the essential rules of law in a condensed format.

Hornbooks are concise one-volume legal treatises, written primarily for law students. They are more detailed and scholarly than other study aids, cite to primary authorities for black letter law principles, and may also discuss policy considerations.

Concise Hornbook Series ("Principles of . . ."): texts in this series provide less thorough coverage of a legal topic than a hornbook, but still cover the essentials.

Emanuel CrunchTime Series: designed for exam studying; includes "flowcharts and capsule summaries of major points of law and critical issues, as well as exam tips for identifying common traps and pitfalls, sample exam and essay questions with model answers.

Questions and Answers Series: "Each book in the Questions & Answers Series contains a collection of titles containing 200-400 multiple-choice and short-answer questions, as well as a comprehensive 'practice final exam,' to help students prepare for course study and for final exams. Each multiple-choice question is accompanied by a detailed answer that indicates which of four options is the best answer and explains, in detail, why that option is better than the other three. Each short-answer question (designed to be answered in no more than fifteen minutes) is followed by a thoughtful, yet brief, model answer."