Customer Reviews

Siegels Criminal Law

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3 star:		(1)
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At first, I really enjoyed this book: there are lots of multiple choice questions and practice essays. I praticularly like the essays, as I need practice with issue spotting and finishing my initial outline within 15 minutes so I can get started on actually writing the essay.

But later on, I found that there are typos in the answer section (for the MCQs) that are confusing. They will confuse one party for another, like writing "Tom" when it's supposed to be "Mike", or list that the answer is "A" when the explanation clearly seems to be for choice "B". Or other times I feel like they changed the wording of the fact pattern that somehow leaves out an essential element of the offense they are asking; like, the fact pattern mentions nothing about an agreement, but the answer explanation refers to an unequivocal agreement.

I was able to discern these mistakes because I studied hard enough to be able to pick them out. But, if I were relying on this book to prepare me for a test, and didn't have the foundational knowledge to know that they were mistakes, I would be very confused and learning the incorrect substantive law!

These errors are few and far between (I think I've spotted 3 or 4 out of over 50 questions), but when it occurs, it's confusing and mind-bending. I recommend this if you're really looking to stretch your knowledge of substantive law and try to see if you can pick out these errors on your own. Otherwise, I would say to skip it!

This book is HIGHLY recommended. Crim law known to be philsophical and the exams are beyond difficult. The first question on my crim law final took me two and a half hours! Insane. When I first opened this book during reading week, I had already done my outlines and attack outlines. This book gave me a heart attack! I had no idea what to do, how to format it, or where to start. After I suffered through the first few essay hypos, I felt like my crim law final wasn't shocking (because the fact pattern was detailed, but not nearly as detailed with a million characters interwoven as Siegel's hypos are) and was able to pound out my answer without wasting time breathing, crying, or having a heart attack (the symptoms many of my peers were experiencing). I will buy Siegel's for every one of my classes now!