How to Case Brief in Law School

I have been sharing tips, tricks, and lessons I’ve learned from my two and a half years in law school on TikTok weekly.

There seems to be an attraction to learn more about law school so I thought I would share a dedicated post on what case briefing is and how I do it, after I shared a quick lesson in video format.

 

What is a case brief?

In law school, you learn the law by reading cases in the textbooks. We call textbooks, casebooks because they are filled with edited cases from the publishers and background information about the cases. 

A case brief is what law students create to summarize a case from the casebook. It is a summary of the case. 

My first year and a half of law school, I would write out all my case briefs by hand, but I realized that typing works better for me.

 

Why case brief?

Well, professors like to cold call or call on you in class when your hand isn’t raised and ask you questions about a case you were assigned for class, so case briefing helps you be prepared for these stressful situations. It also helps with studying and outlining. (I will do another post on how I outline for law school exams soon.) Case briefs can be one page to several pages. It depends on how detailed the professor likes you to be while asking you questions and it also depends on how detailed you like your notes for studying purposes. 

 How I case brief:

I first start off by reading the assigned case in my casebook. While reading, I highlight and annotate the case in my book, making notes about where each part of my brief comes from in the case.

 

What I put in my case brief:

Case name/court/year

Judges/justices

Facts: Who, what, where, when, why

Procedural History: How this case got to the court it is in now

Issue: What does the judge/justices/jury in this case have to decide?

Parties Arguments: The plaintiff and defendant’s arguments in the case

Hold: The decision of the case. Is it reversed? Is the holding affirmed? Is it dismissed? Is it remanded to a lower court? I also usually include a quick summary with the holding of how the court came to the holding.

Rule: The law that creates the holding

Reasoning: How the holding and the rule go together with the facts of the case.

 

And that’s it. Case briefing gets easier over time as you learn to read and understand the cases better.

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