How to Brief A Case

November 25, 2019

Ahhh case briefing, the best way to prepare for classes and essentially what you spend 90% of your time in law school doing.

There are so many methods and approaches to case briefing so its best you try out several to find the one(s) that work best for you.

To start, get a software like OneNote or Evernote, that saves in real time so all your docs and you can access them anywhere on any device.

I use Evernote and create a notebook for each subject, then decide my organization method. Some classes I do by chapter, others by topic, some by class day, it all depends on how to professor goes through the material, and also personal preference.

When it comes to each individual case I have a caption (the case name, court name, citation and year) style I use for every brief, shown below:

My brief format then goes,

Procedural History, Statute, Facts, Issue(s), Holding, Rule, Reasoning, Conclusion

I use bullets to make the information appear easier to manage since some cases are pages long and have a lot of info, but paragraph or spaced out sentence form works too. I’ve used all three and bullets is the easiest for me to digest but again personal preference.

Now for actually briefing I start by reading the case, sometimes I book brief with a highlighter as I go and then when I’m done reading I type out the highlights in the template I made. Other times I fill out the template directly.

Book briefing is a good method, where you pick a highlighter shade for each category in the brief and highlight the key points. But it should not be your only method, although its great for a cold call, to quickly find what you need. The problem is when you highlight too much it can be hard to look at and find what you want.

So I book brief to help me in a cold call in a pinch but I also type it in to have easy access during class or when making an outline. Control f, anyone?

Also doing both gives you several read throughs of the material and it helps you learn it better, which is a plus.

If a case is particularly difficult to understand or read through I Quimbee it and follow along their case brief and watch the video provided if there is one. When it comes to finals, I print out all these briefs and watch all the videos as an additional review resource.

But unless you are in a massive pinch I would not recommend getting in the habit of relying on Quimbee, sometimes different case books edit out certain parts of opinions or your teacher focuses on a different part than what Quimbee does, so its an added bonus not a substitute.

That’s pretty much my case brief method, condensed and what I do on a daily basis in preparation for class.

Next semester I plan to at the end I print out each case brief for a class and hole punch it into my binder so I can handwrite class notes on the brief itself. This past semester I did it directly on my note in Evernote but 1) not every teacher allows computers in class and 2) when it comes to outlines and review time its hard to know what was from the case itself or the book and what was a comment my professor made. And these comments can be make or break on the exam.

I wanted to note as well that I read for each class the day before to help keep the information fresh in my head. Some people like to read ahead for several days to make time for other things but I personally cannot, I get too overwhelmed and then I start mixing up cases and yeah its not a good look for me. But again, personal preference.

Try out different methods, approaches, systems and see what works best for you.

As always, if you have any topics, themes, questions, comments, etc law school related leave them in the comments below so I can continue making posts for you all.

Thanks for reading!

xo Kayla