Open Source Contracts

How to Use this Website

There are several ways to use this website, and you are encouraged to use the materials on it—or any part of them—in whatever way suits your needs (subject, of course, to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license).

That said, we think there are a few especially likely approaches you might consider.

One option is to use the materials in a manner that closely resembles traditional casebooks. Typically, a law professor selects a casebook “off the shelf” and then decides which parts to skip, which to cover, in what order, and what to add. You can do precisely that here. Simply choose whether to start with formation or with remedies and adopt a corresponding "full build,” available on a tab to be downloaded for free on this website. You can distribute the PDF to your students, upload it to your course website, or offer them a printed version from Amazon at cost.

While some instructors may prefer this traditional model, one of the key advantages of this project is the flexibility to customize the materials to suit your course goals and teaching style. For example, if you’d like to skip the module on incapacity, just delete it. Prefer to teach public policy after unconscionability? Simply rearrange the modules accordingly. Want to remove a case we included or add one that isn’t there? To borrow from Nike: just do it! In our experience, teaching from a customized casebook benefits both students and instructors—and saves them hundreds of dollars.

If you’re considering building your own customized casebook, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Examples Are Available: We’ve included examples of customized casebooks we’ve used in our own courses. More will be added soon. Some of those depart significantly from the standard modules, while others are only lightly revised. You are welcome to use any of them as a starting point—or adopt one wholesale if it suits your needs. We plan to upload slides that correspond to posted versions in the days and months ahead. Teachers can email us for credentials to get slides and notes in the password-protected portion of the site.
2. Distribution Options: Once your version is ready, you can share it with students however you prefer—for example, on your course site, by email, or in printed form. If you use Amazon to distribute your version that is based mostly in our book, you must offer it at the printer’s cost as part of the non-commercial license.
3. We'd Love to Hear from You: If you end up creating a customized version, we’d love to hear about it! And if you’re comfortable doing so, we would be delighted to include it in our website (with full credit, of course).

We’re here to help, and we would be happy to discuss your ideas or questions. We’d also greatly appreciate any feedback you may have on this project—big or small. You can reach any of us by email at the addresses found on our websites, linked from the landing page of contractscasebook.org. We hope you find teaching from this book rewarding and know your students will appreciate learning from it without the cost associated with traditional casebooks.