Law School for Everyone: Contracts

By: David Horton, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Professor David Horton

Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

What, exactly, are you doing when you agree to a contract? Should courts blindly enforce fine print that nobody ever reads? Where’s the line between salesmanship and outright fraud? Should written contracts carry more weight than verbal ones?

Join Professor Horton for an accessible introduction from contract essentials, including offers, acceptances, counteroffers, and options and defenses, to contract enforcement, such as fraud, duress, and unconscionability. In lectures that demystify concepts and terms that can often seem intimidating to individuals outside of legal fields, you’ll better understand (and navigate) the contracts of everyday life.

Legal concepts come alive in court cases that range from the outrageous to the heart-rending to the ridiculous. Among the many cases you’ll examine are those involving a contract for the sale of a farm written on a piece of scratch paper, a young man who claimed a soda company owed him a fighter jet, and two companies that couldn’t agree on the meaning of the word "chicken".

Professor Horton shatters the stereotype of contract law as dry and complex and transforms it into a profoundly accessible learning experience. The result is an education in contract law - and in the American legal system - that’s unlike anything you’ll find outside a top-tier law school.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 The Great Courses (P)2019 The Teaching Company, LLC

Clears up a lot about contracts

OK, disclosure: I've been teaching contracts at college level for 35 years. I wanted a refresher, and to simply hear another professor walking through it. Considering I track this topic, I did not find anything world-shakingly new for me, but I liked the presentation, the explanations and the relative simplicity-alongside-clarity. Way back in law school, the underlying logic and sense of some rules was not obvious to me, but I find this professor gives good context to; get the "why" alongside the"what."

Very quick summary

These are not lectures, they're quick summaries. This does a decent job of summarizing contracts for first-year law students, but do not expect to learn new concepts from this. It's just skimming and moves over things too quickly to be a primary source for anything. If you're studying for an exam, this is like an aural version of the outline you should have made for yourself already. If you know the material and are only reviewing, this might be a good fit. That's the only context in which getting through all of contracts in 6 hours is a reasonable proposal. Subjectively, I dislike the voice and would have preferred a real voice actor. It sounds like Mr. Horton hired a convenient young student to do it for him, and the tone of voice constantly makes me question if the speaker is credible on the subject. In a university setting that's irrelevant, but this is Audible after all...

Contract Law

This book helps to make the class make more sense. I giggled when the professor said this is fun. I thought, "said no law school student, EVER!" but he really does make it fun.

Hard to keep up

the terminology and everything else and it gets a little confusing after a while but nonetheless easy enough to understand

Informative, plain spoken, a good deep dive.

I wouldn’t recommend as a first course, there’s quite a bit of legal jargon, but it is a easily understood and well explained breakdown of contracts and navigation of contract law.

Excellent Resource

Excellent lectures to further my study of contract law. I’m enrolled in a Business Law undergraduate course. The chapter titles and accompanying PDF are excellent references. I highly recommend.