How to Write a Case Brief

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Students of law departments worldwide are familiar with writing law briefs and their importance for the overall academic success. Such assignments train the students to operate the laws and legal rules quickly while working with real court cases, facilitating their critical thinking, deeper knowledge of the law, and practical problem-solving skills. This way, the students get prepared for their professional career and gain the much needed experience for it. Evidently, knowing how to write a case brief is decisive not only for their final grades, but for their qualification in general, which is why this article will be useful for anyone who needs to deal with this kind of writing.

Aim of Writing

Writing a case brief is not just a task that your professor gives you as a part of the learning program: it is actually a very significant element of your study. Here are the benefits of practicing this kind of writing:

1. It helps you to automatize your skills of working with the case facts, so that you would be able to do it quickly and correctly.
2. It enforces your better knowledge of the law, as you need to refer to it many times during the writing. Thus, completing a dozen of brief cases will greatly empower you as a qualified professional and boost your confidence in court.
3. It teaches you to filter out the information. Knowing how to brief a case is literally knowing how to scan tones of detailed information and narrow it down to the most significant facts.

Case Brief Structure

The first thing you need to do while learning how to write a case brief is familiarize with its structure. To do this, you might go through a case brief example and see how such papers are organized. In general, their structure should consist of the following elements:

• Introduction. Presents the claim and briefly summarizes the precedent procedures involved in the case.
• Table of Authorities (TOA). This chapter lists the legal authorities that the paper is referring to.
• Statement of Facts. Presents the basic information about the events that happened, providing the court with the extensive knowledge for a balanced decision.
• Argument. This part of the paper breaks the case into separate legal issues, each of them being defined with a certain point heading.
• Conclusion. Offers a resolution to the case, based on the presented facts and laws.

Finding a good case brief sample that you could analyze will be rather useful, as you will have a better idea of the volume of each section and its arrangement. However, make sure to get it from a reliable source, where the papers available for downloading are of the highest standards of quality.

Basic Elements

Just like any other kind of written task, case brief has certain requirements to its content, which cannot be ignored. For those who wonder how to do a case brief example, here is a list of the main elements that need to be included in this kind of writing.

• Facts that actually took place and are important for the legal outcome of the case;
• Procedural history that briefly informs about the stages that the current case has gone through;
• Issue or several issues, discussed in the case;
• Holding of the issue or of the request that was addressed to the court.
• Legal reasoning of the court’s decision;
• Rules of law that were used in this case;
• Concurring or dissenting opinions, if there is such.

How to Write a Legal Brief: Useful Tips

• Decide on the key argument of your paper. While going through the case and analyzing its aspects, you will process many facts and ideas, and your task is to define the most significant ones. As a result, you will formulate your key argument, which will determine the content of your writing and the approaches that need to be used.
• Develop your argument, explaining it for as long as you can. Use brainstorming or free writing to take maximum out of it. Then, work on this paragraph, leaving out the unimportant details and improving the structure of sentences. This way, you will come up with a strong and well-presented argument, which is the nucleus of the whole brief case.
• Work on several arguments that can be applied for the case brief you are working on. It is good to have backup options that can serve as a foundation for your writing. Once you develop a few arguments, choose the strongest one and base your brief on it.
• Make sure the case brief is concise and logical. It has to present information clearly and informatively, so revise every sentence carefully to achieve this goal.

What to Avoid While Writing a Case Brief

Besides keeping up with the suggestions and tips for a good writing, it is also useful to know which points to avoid in your paper. The following mistakes are widespread among law students, so make sure you do not make them.

• The use of passive voice: it makes the writing overly official and enforces lengthy sentences.
• Ambiguous pronouns: they can be very confusing and require clarifications.
• Too many details: the case brief should be concise, and that is always the rule.
• Overuse of legalese.

Besides these tips, keep in mind to proofread your paper thoroughly, as some aspects might require revision. Pay a special attention to the logical order of ideas, the general structure, grammar, and formatting. As it was mentioned before, a sample case brief can assist you in setting an example for your writing, so take your time for finding a good one.

We believe that by following our advice, you will eventually come up with an excellent paper of outstanding quality. However, if you have no time to compose it or if there are too many assignments that you need to do right now, do not panic: we will gladly offer you our help with case brief writing. At TopWritingService.com, we have all the time and all the required qualifications to do this assignment for you. We always put our heart in our papers, so leave all the doubts aside and order from us today!