How to Brief a Case 101 - Don't waste money on Law Preview Forum

[Esc]

nice stuff

[Aeroplane]

Thanks!

[polaris769]

"this situation, any wrongdoing was not done by those in control of the entity"

Is the above statement completely correct? I might be being too picky here, but I thought the Court only said that the the people who did the wrongdoing did not have the level of control to prevent others in the company to discover the wrongdoing. The people who did the wrongdoing may still have been in control of the entity, but did not have the level of control to prevent others to discover the wrongs.

[atlantalaw]

i'm sure this is a dumb question, but what exactly do you mean by 'holding'?

and thanks for writing this up, orange!

[Joe Biden]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

I think briefing is important, however, the biggest mistake a lot of 1Ls make is writing down way too much for their brief. You aren't writing War and Peace.

[badlydrawn]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

I think briefing is important, however, the biggest mistake a lot of 1Ls make is writing down way too much for their brief. You aren't writing War and Peace.

Biden, please respond:

Other sources suggest including a procedural history, reasoning of lower courts, as well as dissenting and concurring opinions. I was curious to know whether TLS 2Ls and 3Ls find it useful for exam-writing to include these articles in briefs or general study.

[El Orance]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

If you find that briefing doesn't help you, then don't. But you certainly have to know the facts and holdings of cases for exams... you can't just apply BLL to an exam w/out context.

[legends159]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

If you find that briefing doesn't help you, then don't. But you certainly have to know the facts and holdings of cases for exams... you can't just apply BLL to an exam w/out context.

I'm a 0L so I definitely haven't gone through this. But from common sense, if presented with a fact hypothetical which is different but analogous in ways to some cases, I agree that having some facts to jog your memory of how to apply the BLL (and more importantly, what the exceptions are) is more important than knowing all the facts, the issue, the holding, etc.

And from reading all the guides written on TLS I get the impression that doing so is a huge time sink that could be better used understanding the reasoning behind the ruling and working out hypos in your head or on paper of ways to apply that rule to other facts or fact where that ruling may not apply.

I mean, if you're doing an outline, are you really going to include all the cases and the detail or are you just gonna write the BLL and a brief description of the exceptions and the context?

(I'm actually genuinely curious and not trying to sound authoritative on this matter at all).

[El Orance]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

If you find that briefing doesn't help you, then don't. But you certainly have to know the facts and holdings of cases for exams... you can't just apply BLL to an exam w/out context.

I'm a 0L so I definitely haven't gone through this. But from common sense, if presented with a fact hypothetical which is different but analogous in ways to some cases, I agree that having some facts to jog your memory of how to apply the BLL (and more importantly, what the exceptions are) is more important than knowing all the facts, the issue, the holding, etc.

And from reading all the guides written on TLS I get the impression that doing so is a huge time sink that could be better used understanding the reasoning behind the ruling and working out hypos in your head or on paper of ways to apply that rule to other facts or fact where that ruling may not apply.

I mean, if you're doing an outline, are you really going to include all the cases and the detail or are you just gonna write the BLL and a brief description of the exceptions and the context?

(I'm actually genuinely curious and not trying to sound authoritative on this matter at all).

The point is a lot of the so-called BLL is just the sum of the holdings of previous cases. You can't know whether/how to apply a rule without knowing how to distinguish the facts of an exam hypo from those of the cases that created the rule. So the cases are not just there as "examples" or merely to "jog your mind" about what the BLL is... The holding+facts = the law you're being tested on, so yes you should know these.

You don't need to over brief, or to put too much info on an outline. Just know the basic facts of the important cases and summarize them in a few words on an outline (the rest of the fact pattern will come back from memory).

[underdawg]

almost every "how to do well on law exams" recommends not briefing and it makes sense b/c you're not going to have to know any of that info besides the BLL for an exam.

I think briefing is important, however, the biggest mistake a lot of 1Ls make is writing down way too much for their brief. You aren't writing War and Peace.

Biden, please respond:

Other sources suggest including a procedural history, reasoning of lower courts, as well as dissenting and concurring opinions. I was curious to know whether TLS 2Ls and 3Ls find it useful for exam-writing to include these articles in briefs or general study.

wow procedural history is useless

dissenting/concurring/reasoning of lower courts can be useful, i suppose (esp in con law), because they may have arguments you want to mirror. only about 2% of all cases would it even be helpful to know in that much detail tho

[Merriweather]

hilariously enough, this evil prof i had demanded procedural history and would grill people on it.

she once called someone an idiot for not knowing it.

h8.

[chipmunk]

wow procedural history is useless

Except in civ pro. Maybe.

[edcrane]

hilariously enough, this evil prof i had demanded procedural history and would grill people on it.

she once called someone an idiot for not knowing it.

h8.

I don't think that's terribly unusual (asking about procedural history, though I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone 'grilled' about it or anything else). Nevertheless, it's basically in-one-ear-out-the-other trivia that I would never bother to study or take note of.