3.1: Check your knowledge of Case Briefs

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Goal

To help you confirm what you know and don’t know about case briefs.
To introduce case briefs and their purposes.

Instructions

Try to answer each of the questions below, either in your head or by writing down an answer.
After you answer a question, click on the + to check your answer.
Note: Further below is a sample case brief written by an actual law student for the Lefkowitz case. You don’t have to anything with it right now. It’s just so you can see what a typical case brief looks like.

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A case brief is a summary of a case but the summary is structured in a particular way with separate sections.

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Multiple meanings of “brief” in legal English

The plain English meaning of “brief” is “short.” So a “case brief” just means a short version of a case, i.e., a summary.
But be careful! The legal English meaning of the word “brief” means a (usually) long and persuasive document (it could be 10, 20, 30 or more pages) written by a lawyer that analyzes issues, makes arguments, and is submitted to a judge.
Compare:A “brief” generally discusses many cases, whereas a “case brief” just summarizes one case.
Lawyers preparing to appeal a case will write an appellate brief. But often lawyers just talk about writing “a brief.” So be aware that “a brief” is usually not brief–it’s more likely a very long document.
Another confusing term is a brief case. A brief case is a bag or carrier for work documents. So a lawyer might use a brief case. But it is not a legal English word.
As a result, if you want to refer to a case brief, then it’s important to use both “case” and “brief” together, e.g., “I just finished writing a case brief,” or “Have you briefed the Lefkowitz case yet?”
Below are images of each of these confusing terms:
Case brief
Brief (e.g., appellate brief)
Briefcase

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Law students write many, many case briefs during law school. One major reason to write a case brief is to prepare for class. Professors ask students about the cases they read and students use their case briefs to explain the case.

But case briefs are also critical for students to learn the law and to prepare for law school exams.

Writing case briefs is also a way to train your brain to think and organize information a certain way, i.e., “to think like a lawyer.” This means taking a large amount of information and understanding, organizing, analyzing, evaluating, and summarizing it so that you can communicate its significance to judges, clients, other lawyers, etc. Being able to analyze and distill information in this way is the most important skill for a lawyer to have.

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No. Attorneys also prepare case briefs. Although the format might change, attorneys create case briefs before presenting an argument orally in court so they can speak intelligently about cases they need to explain for the court.

Attorneys may also prepare case briefs to summarize cases they read while researching a particular topic.

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Usually only the students who wrote the case briefs. Professors typically don’t check students’ case briefs although sometimes law students will share their case briefs with other students when they study together.

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Yes and no.

There are many companies, publishers, and other services that write case briefs for cases that students commonly read in law school. Sometimes these are called “canned briefs,” as in, a cheap, low-quality product that comes from a can. Many law students like to use these.

HOWEVER, most law professors discourage law students from using canned briefs because:

The whole purpose of writing a case brief is to train your brain to think like a lawyer. If you don’t try to write the case brief yourself, then you are not learning what you need to learn to do well on the final exam or to do well in your other law school courses.
Canned briefs are sometimes inaccurate and/or poorly written. The people who create them are sometimes former law students who are paid very little to write a lot of briefs. So the quality is generally not so good.
Everyone writes briefs differently, depending on who you are and also who your professor is. A brief written by someone else will not necessarily be helpful for you. And a brief written by someone who does not have the same professor as you may focus on topics and issues different from the things your professor cares about.

CAVEAT for foreign-educated lawyers and law students:

Commercial case briefs can be very helpful for non-native English speakers who are trying to better understand a case!
It may be helpful to read a commercial case brief before you read a case because it will help with comprehension when you read and analyze the case. Commercial case briefs can give you context which can help foreign-educated lawyers and law students better understand complex language and ideas in the case.

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