How To Set Up A Case Brief

Briefing Cases

BRIEFING CASES

The following excerpt is from How to Study Police and Take Law Exams in a Nutshell, authored past Ann Thousand. Burkhart and Robert A. Stein.

What is a brief?

A brief is a written summary of the instance.

How to prepare a brief
To fix 1, you must distill the case'due south about important parts and restate them in your ain words. The endeavor will provide a variety of of import benefits.

Read the case carefully and thoroughly to describe the example accurately. Describing the case in your own words forces you to determine exactly what the courts said, which concepts and facts were essential to its decision, and the proper legal terminology and procedures.

Tip: Access Black's Law Dictionary® on Westlaw® for legal term definitions.

Succinct briefs are key.

To be most effective, case briefs must be cursory.

Call back: With reading so many cases in each grade, your instance briefs will assistance you remember the details of each instance for class discussions and test preparation.

Briefing cases is an important professional skill
Conference cases is not just for law school. As a lawyer, yous will have to read and analyze cases with a conscientious eye to detail. You also will have to summarize cases when writing legal memoranda, briefs, and other documents and when making oral arguments to courts.

Now, begin practicing and developing your conference skills. Remember, the skills y'all develop in police school will follow you to do.

Steps to briefing a case

1. Select a useful instance cursory format.
There are many different means to brief a case. You lot should use the format that is most useful for your class and exam preparations. Regardless of form, every brief should include the following information in steps 2-ix.

2. Employ the right caption when naming the brief.
A cursory should begin with the case name, the court that decided it, the twelvemonth information technology was decided, and the page on which information technology appears in the casebook.

3. Identify the case facts.
Adjacent, state the facts of the case. This section is necessary considering legal principles are defined by the situations in which they arise. Include in your brief but those facts that are legally relevant. A fact is legally relevant if information technology had an impact on the case's consequence. For example, in a personal injury action arising from a motorcar accident, the color of the parties' cars seldom would exist relevant to the example's issue. Similarly, if the plaintiff and defendant presented dissimilar versions of the facts, yous should describe those differences only if they are relevant to the court'south consideration of the case. Because you will non know which facts are legally relevant until you lot have read and deciphered the entire example, practice not attempt to brief a case while reading it for the starting time time.

4. Outline the procedural history.
With the statement of facts, you take taken the case to the bespeak at which the plaintiff filed suit. The adjacent department of the brief, the procedural history, begins at that indicate and ends with the case's appearance in the court that wrote the opinion you are reading. For a trial court opinion, identify the type of legal activeness the plaintiff brought. For an appellate court opinion, also describe how the trial court and, if applicable, the lower appellate courtroom decided the case and why.

five. State the issues in question.
You lot are now ready to describe the opinion you lot are briefing. In this section of the cursory, state the factual and legal questions that the courtroom had to decide. To analyze a case properly, you must break it downwards to its component parts.

half dozen. Land the holding in your words.
In this department, separately answer each question in the issues section. For quick reference, first country the answer in a give-and-take or ii, such equally "yes" or "no." And so in a sentence or two, country the legal principle on which the court relied to reach that answer (the "holding").

7. Describe the court'southward rationale for each property.
You at present should depict the courtroom'due south rationale for each holding. This section of the example cursory may exist the virtually important, because you must sympathize the court's reasoning to analyze it and to apply it to other fact situations, such as those on the examination. Starting with the beginning issue, describe each link in the court's chain of reasoning.

viii. Explain the last disposition.
Describe the final disposition of the case. Did the courtroom decide in favor of the plaintiff or the accused? What remedy, if any, did the court grant? If it is an appellate court opinion, did the court affirm the lower courtroom's decision, reverse it in whole or in function, or remand the case for additional proceedings?

9. Include other opinions.
Concurring and dissenting opinions are included in a casebook when they nowadays an interesting alternative analysis of the case. Therefore, yous should depict the analysis in your case brief. Information technology volition help yous come across the case in a unlike light.