How is an attack outline different from your master outline?
Your master outline is organized the way the course was taught: by topic, with case briefs, policy notes, and hypotheticals. It answers the question "what did we cover?" An attack outline answers a different question: "a fact pattern just landed on my screen — what do I do first?" It is organized by trigger, ordered by the sequence in which issues must be resolved, and stripped of everything you cannot use in the ninety seconds you have per issue.
The practical test is this: if a line in your document does not either (a) tell you to look at something in the facts, or (b) give you a sentence you would literally type into the answer, delete it from the attack outline. Case names stay only when the case is the rule (Penn Central, Lucas, Javins, Tulk v. Moxhay, Sanborn v. McLean). You do not need Bluebook citations on an exam; a case name and the holding in one clause is enough, and most professors do not require even that unless the syllabus says otherwise.
What goes on page one?
Page one is a trigger index — a two-column list mapping facts to modules. This is the page you read while the proctor is still talking. The left column is what appears in the hypothetical; the right column is where in your outline to jump.
- Any grant language with 'so long as,' 'until,' 'while,' 'provided that,' 'but if,' or 'on condition that' → estates and future interests module; classify before you do anything else.
- Two or more names on a deed, a divorce, a death, or one cotenant collecting rent → concurrent ownership module (partition, ouster, accounting, severance).
- A subdivision, a common developer, a plat, or an HOA → servitudes module, and specifically implied reciprocal negative servitudes.
- The same parcel conveyed twice, a mortgage, or a title search → recording acts module; identify your jurisdiction's statute type first.
- A government regulation, a permit condition, or an ordinance → takings/zoning module.
- A neighbor's smell, noise, light, or vibrations → nuisance (and check whether it is instead trespass, which requires physical invasion).
- A lease, a sublet, a lockout, or mold and no heat → landlord-tenant module.
How do you build the estates and future interests module?
This is the most mechanical unit in the course and therefore the most valuable page in your attack outline. Build it as a strict four-step sequence and never vary the order. Step one: classify the present possessory estate from the words of purchase and limitation — fee simple absolute, fee simple determinable, fee simple subject to condition subsequent, fee simple subject to executory limitation, life estate, life estate pur autre vie, or (in the few states that retain it) fee tail. Step two: identify the future interest and in whom. If it is in the grantor: reversion, possibility of reverter, or right of entry. If it is in a third party: vested remainder, vested remainder subject to open, vested remainder subject to complete divestment, contingent remainder, or executory interest (shifting versus springing).
Step three: run the interest through the special rules. Rule Against Perpetuities — state it in the form you will type, identify a validating life, and remember the class-gift all-or-nothing rule and the rule of convenience for closing classes. Note on your page whether your jurisdiction is common-law RAP, wait-and-see, USRAP's ninety-year period, or cy pres reformation; this is a real jurisdictional split and professors test it. Also flag whether the Rule in Shelley's Case, the Doctrine of Worthier Title, and destructibility of contingent remainders have been abolished — in most states they have, but your professor may want the historical analysis anyway.
Step four: consequences. Who can sue for waste (affirmative, permissive, ameliorative)? Can a life tenant force a sale, as in Baker v. Weedon? Is the condition an invalid restraint on alienation or void as against public policy? Keep a short line on Mahrenholz for the determinable/condition-subsequent distinction and on the constructional preference for covenants over conditions.
How do you sequence servitudes without getting lost?
Servitudes is where students lose the most points because the categories overlap. Start with a labeling question: is the right claimed a use of another's land (easement, profit, license) or a promise about land (real covenant, equitable servitude)? Then run creation. Express easements need a writing satisfying the Statute of Frauds; Willard v. First Church of Christ, Scientist covers reservation in a third party. Implied easements split into implication from prior use (prior common ownership, apparent and continuous quasi-easement, reasonable necessity — Van Sandt v. Royster) and easement by necessity (common ownership plus strict necessity at severance — Othen v. Rosier). Add prescription (elements track adverse possession) and irrevocable license by estoppel (Holbrook v. Taylor).
Then scope and termination. Scope: does the use exceed what was granted, and does Brown v. Voss's rule about extending the easement to a non-dominant parcel apply? Termination: merger, release, abandonment (nonuse plus intent), prescription, estoppel, condemnation, changed conditions.
For promises, keep two parallel columns on one page. Real covenant running at law requires writing, intent to bind successors, touch and concern, notice, and privity — horizontal for the burden in traditional jurisdictions, vertical for both. Equitable servitude requires the same minus privity, plus notice, and yields injunctive relief (Tulk v. Moxhay). Then the equitable exception: implied reciprocal negative servitude from a common scheme, with inquiry notice (Sanborn v. McLean). Add Neponsit for touch-and-concern and HOA assessments, Shelley v. Kraemer for unenforceable racial restrictions, and changed-conditions defenses like Western Land Co. v. Truskolaski. If your professor teaches the Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes, note that it collapses these categories and abandons touch and concern in favor of a public-policy screen — write both frameworks on the page and let the facts pick.
How do you handle recording acts and takings?
Recording is a four-step algorithm. First, apply common law first-in-time and see who wins without the statute. Second, identify the statute type from the language your professor gives you: race (record first, notice irrelevant), notice (subsequent BFP without notice wins even if she never records), or race-notice (subsequent purchaser must be without notice and record first). Third, test the challenger against the bona fide purchaser elements — a purchaser (not a donee or heir), for value, without actual, record/constructive, or inquiry notice. Fourth, check the special problems: shelter rule, wild deeds and chain-of-title breaks, deeds recorded late, deeds out from a common grantor, estoppel by deed, and defective acknowledgments.
Takings runs as an ordered screen, not a balance. Ask in this order: (1) permanent physical occupation, however minor, is per se compensable under Loretto; (2) total deprivation of all economically beneficial use is per se compensable under Lucas, subject to the background-principles-of-state-property-law defense; (3) exaction of a property interest as a permit condition requires an essential nexus (Nollan) and rough proportionality (Dolan), extended to monetary exactions in Koontz; (4) everything else falls to the Penn Central factors — economic impact, interference with distinct investment-backed expectations, and character of the government action. Keep public use separate: Kelo, Berman, and Midkiff give a deferential rational-basis-style review, and many states have since narrowed eminent domain by statute or constitutional amendment.
What do the shorter modules look like?
Acquisition and possession: capture and first possession (Pierson v. Post), finders' relative title (Armory v. Delamirie; lost, mislaid, abandoned, treasure trove; Hannah v. Peel), bailments, adverse possession, and the right to exclude (Jacque v. Steenberg Homes) with its limits (State v. Shack). For adverse possession, list the elements as a checklist — actual, open and notorious, exclusive, continuous, hostile — then the sub-issues: state of mind (objective, good faith, or aggressive trespass), tacking and privity (Howard v. Kunto), color of title and constructive possession, disabilities tolling the statute, and whether the statutory period in your fact pattern is met.
Concurrent ownership: identify the tenancy (joint tenancy with the four unities and right of survivorship, tenancy in common, tenancy by the entirety), then severance events (conveyance, Riddle v. Harmon; mortgage under lien versus title theory, Harms v. Sprague), then the operating rules — each cotenant has the right to possess the whole, no rent owed absent ouster, accounting for third-party rents, contribution for necessary repairs and taxes, and partition in kind preferred over partition by sale (Delfino v. Vealencis).
Landlord-tenant: tenancy type and termination, delivery of possession (English versus American rule), assignment versus sublease and the consent clause standard (Kendall v. Ernest Pestana), constructive eviction (Blackett v. Olanoff), implied warranty of habitability and remedies (Javins, Hilder v. St. Peter), retaliatory eviction, no self-help repossession (Berg v. Wiley), and the duty to mitigate after abandonment (Sommer v. Kridel). Add a line for the Fair Housing Act's prohibited bases and its Mrs. Murphy and single-family exemptions, and for 42 U.S.C. § 1982's race-only but exemption-free coverage.
How do you test the outline before the exam?
Build the outline, then close every other document and take a past exam from your professor using only the attack outline. Every time you have to open the master outline, that is a hole — patch it and note why you missed it. Do this three times. The outline that survives three timed runs is the one you take in.
Trim aggressively toward the end. A Property attack outline that is twenty pages is a second master outline; you will not use it. Target six to twelve pages, one module per page or spread, with bold trigger words and indentation showing branch depth. If your exam is closed-book, the outline's purpose changes: it becomes a memorization scaffold, and you should be able to reproduce each module's decision tree from a blank page. If it is open-book, tab it physically and put the trigger index on top.
One caution on variation: what belongs in the outline is driven almost entirely by your professor. Some courses spend six weeks on future interests and skip takings; others treat Property as a regulatory course centered on zoning, exclusion, and public accommodations. Some teach the Restatement (Third) servitudes framework exclusively. Weight your pages to match the syllabus and the past exams, not to match a treatise's table of contents.