28 August 2024

Need Help Briefing Cases for Law School?

As a law student, knowing how to write a case brief is an essential skill to develop. Case briefing plays a crucial role in building a course outline and serves as one of the most important study tools for law students. You’ll thank yourself for a good case brief when you go to study for finals!

Understanding the importance of case briefs in law school is key. Your case briefs will serve as building blocks for your course outline and help you recall facts, understand key elements, and prepare effectively for class. In addition, case briefing and the Socratic Method work together to help students think like lawyers.

To prepare law school case briefs, it is important to follow a case brief template and examples to ensure all essential elements are included. Good case briefing tips for law students are to keep case briefs concise, with a one-page summary being ideal and make sure to include the title and citation, facts, issues, decision, reasoning, opinions, and analysis. Essential elements of a case brief include summarizing the complaint or indictment, any relevant rules within the law, areas in dispute, and framing issues as a series of questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no".

Tip:

If you bought a new physical casebook, you can access the online eBook and Case Briefing Tool at Casebook Connect by using the access code found on the inside front cover of your casebook. The Case Briefing Tool automatically imports the highlights and notes you’ve made to cases within your eBook, grouped by label names you’ve assigned – like facts or issues – into a template to jumpstart the process.

Steps to case briefing for law school include reading the case through all the way before digging in, assigning a highlight color to each aspect of the case, and following a logical series of arguments in the reasoning section. Make sure to include concurring and dissenting opinions and analyze the case's significance, such as how it relates to other cases, its impact on future rulings, and how it has affected the court's decision-making process. Below you will find some effective case brief writing techniques.

How to prepare law school case briefs

Title and Citation

Remember that a case’s title will list the names of the parties opposing each other. The initiator of the legal action always appears first; if appealing to a higher court, the first name will be that of the loser from an earlier, lower court decision. The citation provides the information needed to find the judge and the court issuing the opinion. Note: If you are a Casebook Connect user, this information will automatically appear when you use the Case Briefing Tool.

Facts

Start with an introductory sentence describing the nature of the case or controversy. Include any rules within the law that are relevant to the case, making sure to note any areas in dispute. Summarize the complaint or indictment including pertinent evidence. Don’t forget to add the case’s procedural history, or summary of actions taken by lower courts.

Issues

At their very heart, issues are questions raised by facts unique to the case and their bearing under black letter law. Look for the gray areas that will impact the final ruling. When stating issues, try to frame them as a series of questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”.

Decision

Also known as the holding, the decision is the court’s ruling on the case. Broader, more substantive decisions typically deal with interpretation of such thorny issues as the Constitution, statutes, or judicial doctrines and may need more detail.

Reasoning

This section of the brief should follow a logical series of arguments by the bench that outlines how the ruling was determined. Ideally, you should demonstrate the chain of argument in a sequential point-by-point fashion.

Opinions

Begin with concurring arguments to show why the winning ruling prevailed. Be sure to include any dissenting opinions, making note of counterarguments.

Analysis

Your analysis should detail what makes the case significant. Among the questions that should be asked and answered are:

How does the case relate to other cases?
How has it affected future rulings?
How has it impacted the court’s decision-making process?

Law school exam preparation using case briefs as study tools is crucial. Case briefing for 1L students should be a priority early on in the semester to develop this essential skill. Building a course outline with case briefs, as well as using law casebriefing tools during your 1L year, will help you get ahead of the game. Make sure to follow a case brief template and examples, include essential elements, and use case briefing as a study tool for law school exams.

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