- Today we're gonna talk
about whether you should
case brief in law school.
What's the answer?
No!
(playful theme music)
No!
Do not case brief.
If you're not sure what a case brief
is, here's a quick overview.
A case consists of many different parts;
some of which are theoretical,
and some of which are actually
labeled in the case itself.
For example, the parties,
who was involved in the case;
the procedural posture, how the case
got to the court of appeal.
Was it an appeal from a trial,
a motion to dismiss?
Was it appealed from an intermediate court
to the Supreme Court?
The questions presented:
what legal questions
did the court of appeals, or the parties,
were they interested in?
The facts, the reasoning, the policy
of philosophical questions,
dissenting opinions,
dicta, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Case briefing means that you've summarized
those different sections of the case,
into some written summary.
Book briefing, the
cousin to case briefing,
is where you take out a
different-colored highlighter
and meticulously highlight
each different section
in the case.
That's why it's also
known as rainbow briefing.
This process takes
hours, and unfortunately,
this kind of briefing
is a huge waste of time.
It is just pure busy work.
Why?
Because you can't use the information
that's found in those cases, on the final.
It's almost all irrelevant.
This is shocking to most people,
but think about how
you're going to use cases
on a final exam, in law school.
We have a whole video
on what you should know
about law school exams, and
we'll put a link down below.
But in summary, a law
school exam is a test
of applying the law, just
like a real lawyer would,
in the real world.
You pretend to be a lawyer for one side,
and then mentally flip to being
a lawyer for the other side.
You're constantly arguing for claims
and counterclaims, and defenses.
In those circumstances,
there is no room at all
for most of the information
that you put in a case brief.
When you're arguing
like a lawyer in court,
you don't care about
the questions presented
in the court of appeal.
You don't really even care
about the procedural posture,
except in rare cases,
in like civil procedure.
Even the reasoning and
the rationale, and policy,
it's not helpful in a courtroom setting.
What you will use on a final exam
are one of two things: one,
either the bare recitation
of the facts; or a bright line legal rule.
For example, let's say
on the exam that you have
a simple hypo about a man who
drives through an intersection
while the light is yellow,
and they hit a pedestrian.
In class, you read two
cases: in the first case,
a person is liable when they
drove through an intersection
while the light turned red;
in another case, the
court simply held that
a driver is liable for any
inherently dangerous activity.
Using those two cases, you might argue
that the man is liable
by drawing an analogy
to the red-light case; you'd say something
like driving through an
intersection with a yellow light
is similar to driving
through on a red light,
and therefore, that person is liable.
Or, you might say that based on the rule
of the second case, driving
through an intersection
with a yellow light is an
inherently dangerous activity,
and therefore, they are liable.
You might argue the
opposite: it's not analogous
to the red-light case,
or it doesn't fit the rule
that driving through a yellow light
is an inherently dangerous activity
and therefore he's not liable.
But the way you use cases
is that you use the rule,
or you use the facts, and that is it.
It's why it's so bad to brief a case;
you're just putting down, and recording,
irrelevant information that you are not
going to be able to
mobilize on your final exam.
So, why would people do this busy work?
Because it's the kind of work that seems
like it might be helpful,
it's the kind of discrete activity
that you can check-off your to-do list.
You can set a goal and
you can do it, in terms
of case briefing, and
during the regular semester,
there just simply aren't that many things
that you can check-off
your list of things to do.
Without mid-terms, or
papers, or pop-quizzes,
there are just no indications
during the regular semester,
that you're on the right track.
You feel largely adrift
without hard deadlines
and discrete tasks, except of course
for the final exam at the end.
So, case briefing provides
a sense of accomplishment,
but unfortunately, that
is an illusory feeling.
Your only resource in law school is time;
if you give it up by
studying the wrong things,
you're dead in the water.
Don't get sucked in to
briefing your cases;
it's just a waste of time.
Instead, focus on
distilling the information.
Just use the parts of the case
that you're actually
going to use on your exam,
put it in a good outline and
start taking practice tests.
Apply the information, apply
the cases that you get,
and you'll see that case briefing
is just a total waste of time.
So don't give up your
time without a fight.
Focus on the things that matter,
and cut out the time-wasters
and you'll do much better
on your next law school exam.
Hey, hold on.
If you wanna spend less time
studying and get better grades,
you're in luck.
We've put together a free e-book:
"The Ultimate Guide to Law School Cases".
Just click the link below to download.
It's some of our best
strategies on reading cases
in half the time, while
better preparing for finals.
And I promise, you will
never case brief again.
Just click below.
Also, if you like this video,
please subscribe to our channel.
We come out with new videos
on how to crush law school
all the time.
Thanks, from everyone here at Legal Eagle.
(upbeat jazz music)
