My name is Costa Ragas and I’m starting my third year at McGill. Last year I developed a website called Twistlaw.ca. It’s a case summary wiki!

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Register & Login

When you register, make sure to select your law school.

Step 2: Profile

Go to your profile, and add your classes. In some cases, one of your classes may already be registered on Twistlaw – you can simply add the class.

Step 3: Search / Browse / Add a summary!

Really, step 3 is up to you. You can choose to search for a summary by entering a keyword. Or you can browse for a summary by class. If you can’t find the summary you’re looking for, add one (the link will be at the bottom of the page)!

And if ever you need to double check anything about this process, you can always try this link here: http://www.twistlaw.ca/learn.php

Who should use Twistlaw?

Twistlaw was designed to be used by any law student in any year of law school. The point is that each summary is organic, changing and improving over time, as more and more people read it and edit it.

Twistlaw is also ideal for study groups. Get everyone in your study group registered on the site, make sure you add the same class (you can even add “study group X” after the class name to differentiate it, if you prefer). Then each member of the study group can view/edit/print the cases, and work on them together.

Case Summary Features

• Each summary can be edited by logged in, registered users. Each time a change is made, the old version is archived and a link is created.
• If you’re using the same case in another class, you can “tag” it for that class by using the drop-down menu when viewing the case summary.
• If the case mentions a particular statute, you can tag that statute as well. (Make sure you’ve added the statute first, though…)
• To print the case summary, click on the Print button… Don’t use “File, Print” from your browser, as it won’t be printer friendly.
• Have something to say about a case that doesn’t belong in the summary? You can add a comment at the bottom of the summary page.

Casebook Features

• First things first, there are RSS feeds to each one of your classes in your casebook. So if a case summary is added for the class, you can decide if you’d like to add that case to your case summary. This is important. Just because you’ve added a class, doesn’t mean you’ve added all the cases that go with that class. The summaries you elect to have in your casebook are entirely up to you!
• Another feature for logged in, registered users is the ability to print out an entire class casebook (others have to do it one-by-one). Click on the print button, and the next page will give you a list of all the case summaries for that class which are in your casebook. Each time you view a printer-friendly page, all of the case names will be in “Heading 2.” For those of you using document styles in Word or Mac Pages, this means that it’s easier to select all the summaries and create a table of contents, selecting just Heading 2 items and adding some page numbers.

Statute Features

• This is one of the latest additions to Twistlaw – a statute wiki! Add a statute by including the name, citation, jurisdiction, and optional description or url. Then you can add a comment about the statute. Or tag the statute for a class in your casebook.
• If there’s a specific section of the legislation you think is important, you can add that as well, and make comments on the sections.

Blawgs

Let me know if you want your law blog added to the list on Twistlaw.

Main News Feed

Sign-up and stay on top of all the latest updates to the site.

Almost done…

So basically, Twistlaw will not function without collaboration. I created it because I think law students all do the same thing over and over and over again (read and summarize cases…), and this can help eliminate some of the redundancies and tease out the issues which we can sometimes overlook.

Many thanks to everyone over at Lawiscool.com for letting me spread the word about Twistlaw.ca.