What Color is Your C.F.R.?
This text is not a comprehensive source for legal research and does not mean to be one. The text has simple and basic content on a few topics in legal research with accompanying exercises. There are coloring book illustrations throughout the text to enhance the content. The text is meant to be an adult coloring book, which is a relaxing exercise, for law students to have fun with and learn a few legal research topics. There is no index or glossary to accompany the text. It would be great if the authors had included an answer key to accompany the text.
The text is accurate and does not seem to exhibit bias in its language or examples. The text does not contain errors in its form or content.
The topics cover the standard legal research class content and probably won’t be out of date anytime soon, as these topics are classic coverage for beginning legal research instruction. Updates to the text should be handled without difficulty, as there is minimal text and it is organized simply.
The text is written in a simple, straightforward manner. Any 1L law student should be able to understand the topics introduced in the text without a great deal of explanation. The exercises are fun and a good beginning introduction to the topics in the text.
The text introduces new ideas found in introductory legal research courses and defines them appropriately. The text is internally consistent in its treatment of those topics throughout the text.
The text is easily pulled apart to one or two pages per topic. The text does not refer back to itself, except as required and the coloring book format lends itself to modularity in that many of the pages could be printed as single handouts instead of the whole text without disrupting the reader’s understanding of the content.
The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion. Each page has large coloring book illustrations, which are meant as an activity to accompany the text. The illustrations don’t distract from the content and in many cases they enhance the topic introduced in the section.
The text is in a PDF and organized like a child’s coloring book. There is no index or glossary. There are no other formats available.
The text is grammatically correct.
The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive. The text uses examples and illustrations that are primarily of illustrated animals and simple, unbiased legal scenarios.
This is a very fun handout idea for an advanced legal research or 1L skills class. While the topics discussed are very basic, the idea of giving the students this text with a little pack of crayons is very appealing. Legal research classes are intimidating and boring for many law students, and their anxiety is very high from their other classes and the new legal research material. Adult coloring books are popular now and are a fun way to introduce mindfulness and lower stress activities into the students’ lives. This legal research coloring book is a very charming and worthwhile text. I do wish it had a different name, because I expected it to be about the C.F.R and I think it might cause some potential users to pass up the text without realizing its general legal research instruction content.