Should You Case Brief in Law School? (Study Advice)

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★★★ Should you case brief in law school? No! ★★★
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. This process takes hours, and unfortunately, this kind of briefing is a huge waste of time. It’s 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.

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.


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[MrMasterDebate]

Case briefs have already eaten my soul after 4 weeks.

[mirasga]

Make friends with classmates who makes case briefs. :D

[arnoldforova]

Case breifing should be second nature or common sense. You need to understand the facts, material facts, legal issues involved and the holding in order to prioritize case precedents.

[jacquelinewatson]

Why do law school professors cold call you about case facts if they don’t help you on the exams?

[michaeldodd]

Someone mentioned the socratic method and being called on. I have heard it is not graded per se but what happens when you're called on in class and aren't prepared? Obviously it won't effect your grade but have you found this might effect your reputation, meaning make you appear in the eyes of your future colleagues to be slacker, and a slacker in the eyes of your professor, who, from what I've been told could be a great resource later when getting externships and summer jobs after 1L? Is this fear unfounded?

[danhulseapple]

Hey there, love your channel! I just had a quick (and maybe pretty ignorant) question for you about practice tests. You've mentioned them a lot in your videos, and for good reason. But my question is how exactly do you know if you did them correctly? Are law professors willing to go over and grade them? From what I've gathered about law school, I can't imagine professors being willing to grade hours-long practice tests for everybody in class. I'm not sure if that's even a valid assumption to make, but how else can you get a practice exam checked to make sure they too aren't wasting your time?

Thanks, and keep up the great work on this channel!

[maureenbellwoar]

What if we are specifically told to case brief??

[feleciawoolens]

What about professors who call on students to question them about specifics of a case (e.g., issue, reasoning, etc.)? I have had this happen.

[jenniferbeveridge]

99k! Do you have anything planned for 100, 000?

[wonderwallflower]

I realised this in my second semester. Case briefs eat up time

[Chasee]

In order to know whether those two cases matter equally, we’d need to know something about the procedural posture. A supreme court case’s rule is better than a trial court, right? Won’t we also have to know about the rationale to understand how new facts could challenge the rules derived from previous cases? Please explain more about why you think judicial reasoning isn’t important given that exams are basically predictions about the outcome of different arguments.

[VernaSelander]

However, university instructors demand that you know how to brief cases whether or not we will ever do that in a professional atmosphere.

[tomhulbert]

I’d like to hear this from a law school professor

[mariguana]

My legal opinion is that we must abolish traffic lights.

[shariecebrewster]

I need to meet you and person need all the good tip

[shariecebrewster]

Yes I am taking all class on YouTube ;;;; it's free and I m ain't pay for it's