re: Law School question: is it ok to use an older edition of the textbook?

Yeah probably, you can always pull cases you don't have, although you may end up reading more than the excerpt in the book.

Get an outline early on and use that as a guide. Supplement the outline as necessary (preferably at regular intervals).

Law school is probably 2x as difficult for those who do outlines at the end (me) or who don't have access to good outlines someone else prepared (thankfully not me)