FAQ
What is Simple Legal Guides?
Simple Legal Guides provides bar exam materials and other legal study materials designed to be concise, straight-forward, and simply written. Subjects are covered in both traditional outline form and in attack plan format, which is a very brief issue checklist to plan for the essays.
Why should you use Simple Legal Guides bar exam materials?
Most bar exam materials are expensive, dense, not user friendly, and filled with extraneous information that doesn’t help test-takers pass the exam.
Simple Legal Guides’ bar exam materials are:
-Affordable
-Straight-forward
-Have highlights and color-coding to organize rules like students and attorneys think
-Written in outline form students are familiar with
-Use If-Then statements to make rules simple and easy to follow
-Designed to be easily searchable
-In the universal .pdf format, able to be viewed on desktop, phone, tablet, or even printed
-Backed by a 100% money-back guarantee
What form are Simple Legal Guides available in?
Simple Legal Guides’ bar exam materials come in a .zip file with .pdf files. This allows the reader to easily transfer them between devices, easily annotate, view them on nearly any device, and even print them!
Because .pdfs are not responsive (don’t adapt to the screen being viewed on), there are versions optimized for desktop and mobile (much larger print for improved mobile viewing).
How do I get Simple Legal Guides’ products and how do I receive them?
Just visit our products pages, purchase through our online system, and your order will be automatically fulfilled. You will receive a link to download your materials, which will come in a .zip format with several .pdf documents therein. On mobile, you may need to use a third-party app like Dropbox or Readdle’s Documents app to download or unzip.
Why all the hashtags (#) and @ symbols in the materials?
The hashtags are used to organize the bar exam materials by topic to make them easily searchable. Want to find the outline for contracts without every single use of the word “contracts” cluttering your results? Just use ctrl+f to search “#Contracts” and you’ll find it.
Want to study standing for constitutional law? Use ctrl+f to search “#Standing.” Boom! Beats flipping through hundreds of pages or shoving hundreds of tabs in your book, doesn’t it?
Topics are referenced throughout the materials using callouts (denoted by the “@” symbol). Want to find all the other topics that direct readers to Contracts? Ctrl+f to search for “@Contracts.”
I wanted to give Simple Legal Guides a try, but did not like them. How do I get my money back?
We are sorry to hear you Simple Legal Guides did not leave you satisfied. If you would like a refund, please email help@simplelegalguides, and we’ll process a refund as soon as we can. (Normally in 10 business days or less.)
What are “Elements,” “Requirements,” “Factors,” and “Exceptions”?
Elements and Requirements are simple: Simply meet every single element or requirement, and the legal doctrine is satisfied. For instance, the elements for the tort Battery (#Civil-Battery) are (1) A (Harmful Or Offensive) Contact; (2) To P’s Person; (3) Intent (See @It-Intent); and (4) Causation (See @It-Causation). If all those elements are satisfied, a civil battery has occurred. If one of those elements are not satisfied, a battery has not occurred. Simple!
Factors are a list of possible attributes or factual circumstances a court will evaluate when determining whether a legal doctrine applies. One or several factors may be missing and the doctrine could still be satisfied. Not all factors are equal, some are more important to courts than others.
For instance, when evaluating if a suspect was in custody, such as during a custodial interrogation, courts will look at whether the suspect was in the traditional interrogation environment, whether there were formal procedures contemporaneous with the interrogation, whether there were traditional signs of arrest like handcuffs, and the place where the interrogation took place. In an essay, argue all these factors and come to a conclusion based on the total persuasiveness.
Exceptions are rules or doctrines that make a rule that would ordinarily apply inapplicable. If there are exceptions, follow the standard rule, then check to see if any exceptions apply (or ask, “Are there any exceptions?”). For example, even though the rule of double jeopardy may seem to forbid trying a suspect for the same offense twice, the exception for a retrial for a hung jury would make the ordinary rule inapplicable. Some of the hardest legal doctrines to follow are when there are exceptions to exceptions, or even exceptions to exceptions to exceptions! Exceptions often follow the word “unless” or “but.”
What are all these “ifs” and “thens”?
The law is much more complex in practice, but at its heart it’s very simple. The law is a set of rules. If 1, 2, and 3, then Doctrine A applies. Simple Legal Guides try to make application of the law as straight-forward as possible by writing the law as if-then statements, and highlight the “if” and the “then,” to draw attention to the requirements of the law, and the consequences to be followed.
For example, if there is a successful defense to a contract formation, then there is no contract. This is in contrast to an unenforceable but valid contract.
