Briefing a Case

One of the first assignments law students receive (as early as during orientation) is to read and brief a case. A case brief should not cause you any stress. From my experience, these case briefs are usually more for your own benefit and will typically not be shared with others (of course this can change from school to school and professor to professor).

When asked to brief a case, one of the first things to consider is the word “brief.” A case brief should be just that – brief. Often students’ case briefs are as long as the cases they read, and this is simply not the way it should be. It is important to understand the reason why students brief cases in the first place.

Students are asked to brief cases because it is a great way to extract the relevant information for a case. Law students are asked to read a multitude of cases in each class as soon as school begins. Thus, it will be difficult to remember which case stood for each legal topic without something that will jog one’s memory. You may want to think of a case brief as a “cheat sheet” (even though it is not cheating at all). Imagine walking into a law school classroom and being called on to discuss a case you were assigned to read. Having read so many cases, it will likely be difficult to recall the specifics of that particular case. When you have a case brief in front of you, however, you can feel a bit calmer because there is no need to rely solely on your memory. A well-written, clear, and concise case brief will have all of the answers you need at your fingertips. These briefs are also useful when studying for an exam because they are neat and compact summaries of the most important aspects of the cases.