Experiencing Property

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Experiencing Property takes a unique approach to Property Law and related skills development by emphasizing student professional identity formation and the historical and cultural forces that influence Property Law and society. Using this innovative textbook, students experience Property Law by performing the lawyering tasks associated with Property Law issues while being challenged to reflect on their own past and future experiences with the law.

Written by an award-winning teacher and member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, Experiencing Property relies on a simplified narrative approach to introduce key vocabulary terms, fundamental concepts, and legal rules before examining illustrative cases. Additional discussion questions, applied problems, and lawyering exercises provide students with the pedagogical foundation they need to demonstrate competence on the NextGen Bar Exam. Experiencing Property complements these traditional reading materials with relevant excerpts from the popular literature, such as The Color of Law and Evicted!, to situate Property Law in its broader historical and societal context.

Consistent with its orientation toward experiencing Property Law as a practicing lawyer would, the text contains actual legal documents. Each chapter concludes with a student-friendly Study Guide to assist students in summarizing and outlining the material. Finally, Experiencing Property is accompanied by customized and comprehensive formative assessment materials, accessible at eproducts.westacademic.com, so students can measure their progress in mastering Property Law.

Key features of Experiencing Property include:

• A comprehensive Teacher’s Manual with PowerPoint slides to accompany the text, along with sample syllabi for a three-to-six credit hour Property Law course.
• Case briefs, answers to the problems and discussion questions, exemplars for the skills exercises, and suggestions to encourage students to reflect upon the formation of their professional identity as they perform the skills exercises.
• Suggested links to interesting videos on key cases.
• Chapter-by-chapter student Study Guides that assist students in learning the vocabulary, organizing the legal rules, and synthesizing the material.
• Formative assessment materials, prepared by the author to accompany the casebook, accessible at eproducts.westacademic.com. These formative assessment materials include Jeopardy-like questions, multiple-choice questions, short-essay questions with model answers, and longer essay questions covering topics from multiple chapters with model answers.
• Suggestions for integrating the author’s Developing Professional Skills: Property Interactive Lessons for additional practice in skills development.

The scope of coverage for Experiencing Property emphasizes the areas of Real Property Law covered by the NexGen Bar Exam:

• Chapter 1 introduces Property Law through individual experiences and historical, cultural, and political perspectives.
• Chapter 2 covers personal property.
• Chapter 3 focuses on gratuitous transfers of property rights through gifts, intestate succession and the wealth-destroying effect of heirs’ property, estate planning, and adverse possession.
• Chapter 4 explores landlord and tenant law and the societal problems of affordable housing and homelessness.
• Chapter 5 explains present, future, and concurrent ownership rights, including the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act.
• Chapter 6 covers real estate transactions and mortgage law principles.
• Chapter 7 explains easements, restrictive covenants, and the legacy effects of racial restrictive covenants.
• Chapter 8 introduces zoning law, explores the legacy effects of racial zoning and condemnation actions, and explores the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on governmental takings for public use.

About the Author
Professor Colleen E. Medill is the Barbara Wittmann Schaefer Endowed Chair of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Real Estate Lawyers. Professor Medill is the author of Developing Professional Skills: Property, Medill’s Developing Professional Skills: Property Interactive Lessons, and Acing Property. Prior to writing Experiencing Property, she was a co-author of Contemporary Property. Professor Medill has taught the first-year Property Law course for over 25 years, first at The University of Tennessee College of Law and currently at the University of Nebraska College of Law. Early in her career at Tennessee, she won the Outstanding Teacher Award. While at Nebraska, Professor Medill has won the University’s highest teaching honor, the Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award, the Outstanding Educator Award from the Nebraska Bar Foundation, and the student-selected Professor of the Year award numerous times. She currently serves as a subject matter expert on Real Property Law for the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: Experiencing Law Series
Publication Date: 07/17/2025
Related Subject(s): Professional Identity Formation