Website for sharing notes and outlines

Law School Forum for Law School Students
1

Last week someone posed the idea of creating a TLS outline bank. The only other option is uploading your outline to outlinedepot (where it then becomes their property to sell, edit, whatever) in a one-for-one trade to download another outline. You can also purchase a download credit from them for $12.95. Problem is, aside from them obtaining full rights to your work (fuck corporate America, maaaan) you really have no idea what the quality of the outline your getting is. They let you preview a small portion, but after that it might all be clowns and pictures of kittens.

I figured I have a shitload of web space, empty from other projects I’ve abandoned, so why not toss something together? I don’t expect this to be a competitor to outlinedepot since they have something like 50,000 outlines and I have.. well, zero. I am offering more of a mom & pop store alternative. My site offers this:

  • Everything is free
  • You retain all rights to your material and can request material be deleted at any time
  • You can rate and comment on submissions
  • You can tell me something you want, a feature for example, and I will try to figure out a way to make it happen
  • I’m not going to be riding around in a Rolls Royce because some 20-somethings uploaded their outlines to my website

So that is my spiel. Worst case scenario is no one uses it and I crawl back into my hole for a week before school starts. Another scenario is that my lack of coding prowess causes a database meltdown that sends all of your notes and outlines into oblivion come finals time. Either way, the site is there for you to use. I am still working on tweaks here and there. The search function is about as bare bones as you get so I need to upgrade that, as well as fix the glossary feature. I tossed it up there for use now, but all it does is create a pager using submission titles, which is pretty useless.

The address is http://www.lsnotes.com - I am ballparking an 80% chance of some errors once it starts getting some traffic, so enjoy.

Questions, comments, suggestions, flames and racial slurs are welcome.

Edit: If someone wants to toss an outline or two up, I would appreciate it so I can troubleshoot any errors.

2

Hope this takes off and soon ha.

3

Some school honors societies have free online Outline banks for 1Ls, stocked with the outlines of top performing students. I know they do it at Loyola Law School, LA, so I am sure other schools must have some version.

4

Awesome, I threw one up for you to test out.

5

Thanks!

6

Great idea.

7

Just uploaded an outline

Good luck with this!

8

Here’s to hoping this gains some steam.

9

I’m going to upload all my 1L outlines. Hope this takes off.

10

Thanks - turns out the title mechanism messes up when entering a class/professor name for the first time. I fixed the title on your entry so now I just need to figure out a work around.

11

Cool idea, thanks.

12

I am a 0L, but I will definitely give back once I start making mine. Thanks for this. This is awesome!

13

+1

14

cool beans.

15

Cool. Two suggestions:

  1. How about making it an option to post the grade you received for the class? I would like to know whether I’m looking at an A outline or a C- outline.

  2. Make it easier/possible to delete the files once they’ve been uploaded. I decided I didn’t want to broadcast my outline over the internet after all, and the site didn’t make it easy to fix this. (I had to upload a file called “redacted” instead- feel free to delete it for me.)

Otherwise, awesome!

16

Thanks - I changed the permissions so you will be able to delete your own submissions now.
I will add the grading field later.

Cheers

17

One other suggestion, which you might disagree with: The reason I decided not to publish my outline is that I felt a little exposed- in my case this is because my school and professor name were required fields. I didn’t want my professor coming across the outline I posted for her class and possibly identifying me as a result.

Maybe, especially for outlines posted with book info, the school and professor fields could be optional? That way, users would still know that the outline pairs with a class using the same book, but it could optionally better protect the identity of the uploader. Braver souls than myself would have the option of revealing which school/professor the outline is for.

18

I agree with this. Disagree with your grade suggestion though. IMO, no such thing as an A outline or a C outline.

19

Really? Maybe you’re just not understanding what I mean?

A outline= an outline used by a student to take a final exam for which s/he subsequently received an A
C outline= an outline used by a student to take a final exam for which s/he subsequently received a C

You don’t think it would be helpful to know that the Contracts outline you’re reading from the site was written by a kid who failed Contracts?

20

Oh I totally understand. I’m just telling you it doesn’t work like that. A good outline doesn’t mean good results. I’ve given people outlines from classes I got A’s in and seen those same people end up with poor grades in the class. I think knowing the grade a person got gives you a false sense of security. You need to use any outline you get from someone else as a base, evaluate the level of detail it goes into at the beginning, and edit as you go along in your class.