1L of a Blog Series: Three Tips for Reading & Briefing Cases

Welcome to law school! This is a biweekly series with tips and tricks for success in law school. It’ll cover things like time management, outlining, preparing for exams, and more! Although this series covers skills and tricks that might be new to 1Ls, I hope that every member of the law school community can find something helpful here.

You’re a week or two into your law school classes, so you’ve started digging into your casebooks. From your first reading, you probably noticed two things: the takeaways aren’t super obvious and you’re going way slower than you expected.

Both of these are totally normal! Learning from cases means that you’re learning from primary sources. Unfortunately, this means that the cases weren’t written for you to learn from. Instead, the opinions you’re reading were written to solve real-life problems. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great learning tools. It just means you need to learn how to dissect them.

Before your first class, you were likely introduced to the parts of a case brief. You know to identify relevant facts, tease out legal rules, and dissect dissents. However, you are also realizing that you’ll need to become more efficient to keep your nightly reading assignments under control. The following tips will help you streamline your process to get the most out of your briefs.

1. Read and re-read

For most cases, I recommend reading them twice. This tip seems counterintuitive to saving time but hear me out. The first time you read the case, put your pen down. Just read the case for the story. Get a feel for what’s happening. Then, pick up your pen and do a second, closer reading. This is when you’re digging out the parts of your brief and analyzing the rule of law.

Why is this approach helpful? The first reading helps you understand where the case is going and what might be relevant. It gives you the big picture without the stress of trying to figure out whether that one line is the court’s reasoning or the holding. Then, when you return a second time, you have a better understanding of the broader picture so you can make more informed decisions about what needs to go in your brief. If you skip the first read-through, you’ll often find yourself deleting portions of your brief that you spent precious time fine-tuning because you come to realize they weren't relevant. By building two passes through each case into your reading schedule, you will often save time while being more confident in your case brief for class. I caution against reading each case more than twice, though. Oftentimes, the diminishing returns in a third read weighed against your valuable time means that a third, fourth, or fifth read-through is not worth it.

2. Tailor your brief to your professor

When you first start a semester, you should go all-out on your briefs. Put every (relevant!) detail in. Give equal weight to each component.

However, a few classes into the semester, you should start to get a better sense of what your professor wants to talk about. Some professors may be wild about knowing every factual detail of each case. Others may not care about what happened and just want to talk about the rule of law. You’ll find professors at each end of this case briefing spectrum, as well as at every point in between. To be the most efficient and effective student in each class, you should tailor your brief to your professors’ preferences.

This process is not difficult, but you need to be a keen observer while also participating in each lecture. Besides noting the rules of law you’ll need for your outline, you should also be paying attention to what types of questions your professor asks. Do they ask for full case recitations? Are they interested in the one-sentence takeaway of each case? How do they prompt you and your colleagues to use the cases? By questioning what the professor is looking for, you are helping your future self save time on case briefs and ace the next cold call.

3. Self-assess

They say practice makes perfect, and case briefing is no exception. However, you’re likely not being asked to turn in your case briefs, so how do you know if you’re doing them correctly?

Self-assessment! Every class is an opportunity to assess how you’re doing with reading and briefing the cases. Even if you’re not on-call that day, use your case briefs to play along. Constantly ask yourself if you could have answered the professor’s question. Analyze what you missed from your brief that your professor or colleagues discussed in class. You can note things you missed directly on your case briefs, which you can then analyze for trends.  If you find you’re consistently missing key portions of the cases in your briefs, it’s time to re-evaluate your technique.

If you’re having a hard time with your readings, you’re not alone! Reading primary sources like cases is a difficult process that you likely haven’t had to do before. Trust that you’re getting more efficient as you practice and, before you know it, you’ll be briefing cases like a pro. And, of course, if you’d like additional guidance, go see your TA, academic success professionals, and/or your professor. Don’t waste your precious time because you’re nervous to ask for support! Everyone was new to case briefing once, and everyone has their own tips to share. 

For now, it’s time to get back to your reading!

 

(Dayna Smith)