Hey guys.
Welcome back to my channel.
I'm Angela Vorpahl of angelavorpahl.com and the Law School Network Facebook group.
And on this channel, I help law students get the grades and land the
job so that you guys can start your lowering life on your own terms.
In this video, we are going to talk about one of the most common
things you hear when you start law.
School, which of course are case briefs.
And so what in the world is a case brief?
Why do we need them?
And how do you build one out?
So we are going to tackle those pieces step by step together and be sure to
stay till the end because I'm going to tell you guys the biggest mistake
that most new law students make when they first start case briefing.
So if you guys are ready to get started, smash that like button and let's.
So first off, what is a case brief?
Well, a case brief is basically the best way we've come up with to be able
to pick out the important parts of a case that you're reading in your law
school classes, because 99% of what you are going to be assigned to read
by your law school professor are cases, especially that first year and cases are
essentially judicial opinions written by.
To decide a dispute of law between two parties.
And so we need a way to be able to organize the information so
we can understand what in the world is actually going on.
And so when you think about a case brief, there are five main areas.
The first is the facts.
So who is suing who for what?
The second is the issue.
What is the issue of law that the parties have asked this court to decide?
The third is the rule.
What is the biggest takeaway from this case?
The fourth is the analysis slash reasoning.
So what are the justifications the court has given to come to
the outcome that he or she did?
And number five is the holding.
What is the outcome of the.
So now that we know the five big pieces that make up a case
brief, it begs the question, why do we need a case brief at all?
Well, as we talked about what you guys are gonna be reading, the so-called cases
are written, judicial opinions designed to resolve a dispute in a lawsuit.
And so when a judge is sitting down to write his or her opinion, they're not
thinking with law students in mind.
They're not designed.
To teach law students the law, they're designed to help resolve this dispute
in front of them so they don't think about, well, what is the best way to
talk about the law or my decision making?
Or What is the best way to organize this so that a new
law student would understand?
And so what tends to happen is these cases get very convoluted, very complex,
very lengthy, and essentially turn into a quagmire of us having to play detective
to figure out what in the world these five different pieces are and how to grab.
From a case.
And so case briefing is the best way we have found to do that.
And another thing to keep in mind is that your professor has a very
specific motivation and a very specific reason for assigning you this case.
There is a big takeaway that he or she wants you to get.
From the case, and so it's basically our job to figure out what that is
so that we can make sure that we are learning the law that we are supposed
to be learning from this case.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why doesn't the professor just
tell us what the big takeaways are and save us all of these hours and
hours of reading an investigation?
Well, that would be very easy and very efficient, and
yes, 100% a better approach.
But as it stands now, the way that law school has taught, your professor will
only tell you that once you get into class and will still expect you to at
least take a shot at it first yourself.
So now that we know what goes in a case brief and why we have them, the next
step is to actually build them out.
So we're gonna go through the five steps of how to.
Step by step create your case brief.
Before I do that, however, I want you guys to understand that case
briefing is only the first step of the overall study strategy.
If you guys are curious on how case briefing fits into this
overall strategy, definitely grab the free beat, the curve guide.
I will link it in the description below so that you can make sure
you have a holistic approach to how you are mastering this material and
getting ready for final exams with.
Step number one is going to be choose where your case briefs are going to
live for the rest of the semester.
Now, any note-taking platform will do, but I'm a personal fan of Microsoft OneNote.
I love how it is organized, but of course you can use Evernote or Google
Docs or Microsoft Word as well.
Step number two is to create your case brief template.
And when I say case brief template, I mean something extremely basic.
Literally five bullet points with those headings that we called out.
Issue rule analysis slash reasoning and holding.
Another thing I really like to create, in my case brief template are the parts
of the case that a professor might ask questions about in class, but will
almost never show up on a final exam.
I'd like to go ahead and include those, so if I wind up taking
any notes on them, I cans.
See that they are physically separated from the very juicy sections we talked
about above, but they're still present.
So I will physically create a dotted line and then include these below.
And those are the procedural history, parties, arguments, and any
concurring or dissenting opinions.
Now, when I say case brief template, the idea is that you create this once
and then you can just copy and paste it for every case that you're reading.
Very quick and simple.
And.
The third thing that I like to do is to copy and paste the headings and
subheadings from your syllabus into your case, brief right above it.
And the reason that we wanna do this is because you don't wanna just
understand the very particular point of law that this case is teaching you.
You also wanna have an idea of how this fits into the larger picture
of what you're learning in class.
And so most professors do a pretty decent job of creating
those headings and subheading.
So that you know kind of where this case fits.
So for example, your professor might have a syllabus that has part one breach
of contract remedies, and then under that, a subsection that says money
damages, and then a subsection under that that says expectation damages.
And so if your case fits under that subheading, then you know,
all right, we're learning something related to expectation damages.
That's part of the larger hole of money damage.
And money damages is part of one of the remedies of breach of contract,
and so it really helps you sort of correlate what you're learning
to these larger umbrella issues.
Now, if your professor does not have it together and has not created
a helpful syllabus, don't worry.
You can always use the table of contents of your textbook and hopefully that will
create some headings and subheadings so that you know what that case is falling
under and how it connects to the broader whole of the concepts you're learning.
Step number four is to copy and paste a summary of the case into your case
group before you actually read the.
I know.
Hear me out.
As we talked about earlier, these cases are not designed
with law students in mind.
They are not designed to help law students learn the law.
They are long, they're confusing, they're complex.
And so the last thing we wanna do is invest.
Dozens and dozens and dozens of hours into reading these cases
without any clue about what we're supposed to be getting out of them.
And so my favorite go-to case summary platform right now is Quimby.
And no, this is not a sponsored video, it's just the most accessible platform I
have found that really breaks down what these cases are about in layman's terms.
And so Quimby has these short little videos that really, really talk to
you as if you are an eighth grader.
They're very easy to digest and understand.
And then underneath the video is, Very basic case brief, I would take that case
brief, read it through and copy and paste it into my case brief as a foundation to
then be able to build on, and it doesn't have to be Quimby, it can be another
supplement or a two three L outline.
But the point here is that we wanna know what it is we're
reading before we actually invest.
All of those hours into reading the case word for word, you're going to be able to
identify those big takeaways more quickly, and you're going to be able to get to
the meat of the case so much more easily.
And step number five is to now sit down and read the case.
But the great thing is that you already have a baseline foundation.
In your case brief from the summary that you copy and pasted in the step before.
And so now as you read the case, your job is just to grab any details, put them into
your case brief, that help you understand those five main areas, facts, issue,
rule, analysis slash reasoning, and.
Holding.
And important thing to keep in mind as you're reading these cases
is that these are your notes, and so they're designed to be messy.
They're designed to be imperfect.
They are only there to serve as a foundation for your class
notes, which is the next.
Study step.
And so don't feel like these need to be pur, perfectly curated or in any way.
Beautifully done.
This is just the messy middle to set us up for the steps that come afterwards.
And this brings us to the biggest mistake that new law students make
when it comes to case briefing.
And that is, They don't stop.
What do I mean by this?
Once you have Reddit case, we want to walk away.
Now, this is really tough to do when you first start out because of this
thing we know as cold calls, right?
So in a class, the professor will usually call on someone at random.
To explain the facts of the case, the takeaways from the case, and
continue to pepper them with questions.
And so we assume that these very, very detailed questions that
our professor is asking, we need to know the answers to them.
And the way that we prepare ourselves for that kind of an experience, a
very traumatic experience is to try to master the cases before class.
And that looks like rereading cases.
That looks like reviewing your case brief a million times before you walk
into the classroom, but all of that.
Colossal waste of time.
Why?
Because your professor in class will tell you the things that he or she
wants you to know from that case.
And the real work in law school comes after class, not before.
And so we need to make sure that we're opening up space and time and energy
to really tackle the study strategies that come after case briefing.
And we can't do that if we fall into the trap of spending all
of our time on the reading.
Now, I will say that this is inevitable for the first few weeks of the semester.
The cold call reality trauma is real, and I know from personal
experience that you want to show up.
You want to impress your professor and you want to put on a good
face for your classmates.
But just know that we are working on phasing this out as quickly as we possibly
can, as you get confidence in your reading and in your case briefing so that we can
focus on the study steps that come later that actually move that needle forward.
All right guys.
That's it for today's video.
I hope that was really helpful, and if you're looking to join a community
of other awesome humans making the journey to and through law school,
then I invite you to join us inside the Free Law School Network Facebook group.
The link will be in the description below, and I can't wait to see you inside.
I will see you guys in the next one.
Bye.
Hi.