If you are starting law school in the next few weeks, you will soon notice that everyone is talking about briefing cases. But many people don’t understand what effective “briefing” is. Well, we are here to help.
In a nutshell, a case brief is nothing more than a set of notes you take on each assigned case, to ensure you’re paying attention to the important points (and so you’ll be ready for the class discussion).
However, reasonable people disagree about the best way to brief cases!
Your professor, and your legal writing instructors, will probably tell you that you need to actually write/type out your case briefs. There’s nothing wrong with doing this (and Lee briefed most of the cases she was assigned this way), but there are other options.
The most common alternative is “book briefing.” This approach, made popular by Law School Confidential, involves simply highlighting different parts of the case in different colors, right there in your textbook (hence the name). If it helps, you can also draw a little picture at the top, to remind you of the facts.
It’s really up to you what you want to do, but we suggest trying out both options, and weighing the pros and cons. For many law students, the extra time required to write up case briefs is time well spent, but it is time-consuming! If you’re someone who has a good recall for facts and you tend to understand the things you read on a single pass, book briefing might be a more efficient option. (Alison exclusively book briefed, so it’s definitely possible.)
So, let’s look at two example briefs.
It’s fine to adapt the suggested sample brief to your own learning style, but – at a minimum – you generally want to include:
Don’t worry if your first case brief isn’t perfect! Briefing is a skill you’ll develop as you become more comfortable reading cases.
If you’re book briefing, you still want to identify all the items listed above. You also want to focus on making each section easy to find on the fly (as you may have to look for an answer quickly after being called on). How do you do this?
Early in the semester it is important to try out different types of briefs to see what works best for you. And remember some briefs will work better for some classes and not others.
Also, keep in mind that as you go through law school, your briefing habits may change. Lee was all about the traditional brief for the first two years of law school, but by third year she found she could book brief and still feel prepared for class (because she was a better law student at that point!).
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Lee Burgess, Esq. is the co-founder of the Law School Toolbox, a resource for law students that demystifies the law school experience and the Bar Exam Toolbox, a resource for students getting ready for the bar exam. Lee has been adjunct faculty at two bay area law schools teaching classes on law school and bar exam preparation. You can find Lee on Twitter at @leefburgess, @lawschooltools, & @barexamtools.
There are plenty of books out there, but we also have our start law school right course that would walk you through this process: https://lawschooltoolbox.com/start-law-school-right/ Best – Lee
Book briefing is for the weak. Handwrite those things so you actually retain the information. Are there example cases that I can use to help me get better at briefing?If you already have your casebooks, then you should use those (obviously, within the syllabus is the best way to avoid duplicate work). If you haven’t started school yet, you can look online to find released copies of cases to practice with or Lexis/Westlaw, if those are available.
[…] I’ll argue with some of the goody-two-shoes advice that’s out there about law school (no, I don’t think you have to brief every case to do well), but there are two things I consider non-negotiable: class and the reading. Going to class is a […]
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