In this course, you will learn how to try a civil lawsuit in federal court.

Our class sessions will take place in Room 201 on Monday and Wednesday mornings from 10:00 to 11:40.

There are two required books:

(1) O'CONNOR'S FEDERAL RULES—CIVIL TRIALS (2025 edition) (Thomson Reuters), which I'll refer to as your "Rules Handbook." This book contains all of the rules and statutes that you'll be learning this semester. It also contains "commentaries" that provide helpful instruction on how to carry out many of the procedural maneuvers that we'll study. Please purchase the 2025 edition (ISBN 9781668744154). PLEASE NOTE: This book is updated annually and shipped out in December, so it sometimes fails to arrive by the start of spring semester classes. Do not worry about this. The book always arrives by mid January, and we won't need it until then. If you are slow to obtain the book, I will not hold it against you. The CSU Bookstore is familiar with this problem; we placed orders for the book months ago.

(2) Erichson, INSIDE CIVIL PROCEDURE (3d ed. 2018) (Wolters Kluwer) (ISBN 9781454892526). This book provides a clear, concise overview of all the topics we'll study this semester.

As you can see, I teach this course without a traditional casebook. Instead, I have created 48 "Problems" that pose real-world questions in specific factual settings. Answering my questions—i.e., applying the rules and statutes to those fact patterns—will be the main way that you learn Civil Procedure. We will certainly read some cases in this class, but those cases (and all of the Problems) will be posted on my course web page. My web page is on Blackboard. It will be up and running before our first day of class.

How will you know what to read for each class? The reading assignments are not in my Syllabus. Instead, the reading assignments appear on the first page of each Problem. At the end of each week, I will send you an email message telling you which Problems we'll cover in our next two class sessions. The Problems drive this course.

How will you make use of the two books listed above? The Rules Handbook will provide the resources you'll need to answer almost every question posed by my Problems. INSIDE CIVIL PROCEDURE will give you a concise, big-picture understanding of every major topic to be covered in this course. As we move through the semester, the Problems will direct you to read an excerpt from INSIDE CIVIL PROCEDURE every time we enter a new section of this course.

In our first two class sessions, we won't be doing any Problems at all. Instead, I'll give you an introduction to the Civil Rules and to the path of a civil suit.

I look forward to seeing you at our first class session—on Monday morning, January 13, commencing at 10:00 in Room 201. Before our first class session, please read my Syllabus, which is posted immediately below as an attachment. The Syllabus provides more details on how I will teach this course.