20 Free Case Brief Examples And Know-How To Write It

For a law student, writing case brief examples are the ultimate skill you have to master. Even though the skill will not factor on the final grading score, it’s still the most important one. The reason is that through exercising in writing case brief, may rich your knowledge on the past cases. That way, you will have more understanding when you’re practicing later in the future.

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How to Write Case Brief

Before practicing for writing case brief, you should take a look on case brief examples printable which you can find through the internet. You can print several of them, then compare to come with the best method on how you’re going to write yours. There are many ways you can follow, but for general, here they are:

1. Look for Case Brief Template

After reading several case brief examples – even the case brief PDF ones, you surely can come up with a template. If you couldn’t decide to use which one, you can combine them. But in general your case brief should have these elements:

Fact. In this part, you have to input about the case, its parties, what happened (factual and procedural), and the judgment for the case.
Issue. Here you should state what in dispute in regards to your case.
Holding. The holding is about what rule of the law that applied to the case.
Reasoning. The reasoning is the reason why the case used the particular holding.

Aside from those four elements mentioned above, you also can add several. These elements depend on your professor preference, or you want to challenge yourself. But some other elements that also often used such as dicta and dissent. The dicta is a formal commentary about the decision on the case, but not the basis of the decision. Meanwhile, dissent is the variant opinion which happened about in the ruling of the case.

2. Choose Your Case

After you write down on the template, you have to choose a case to fill it. Just like any other academic tasks, choosing a case for a case brief is also has several types. First, wishing for a good mark; second, wanting to get done with the task; and third, because you put interest in the case. Among those three kinds, arguably the third one is better. The reason is that your interest will become a catalyst in your study.

3. Fill the Template with Your Case

Once you choose which case to go with, then put it in your template. And when you’re in this phase, make sure not to rewrite the court document word per word as they are. You should paraphrase the court document in more understandable language. That way, it will be easier for you to understand. And also, while translating the court language to plain English will also sharpen your skill.

20 Case Brief Examples

To be good in writing case brief, plausibly you have to read many case brief examples in your spare time. Just like the general knowledge, where you will get to know more if you stay loyal to books, this matter is also as same. The reason is that the law is about the facts that happened in human life. And even if the case classified as same, but there will be different details. That’s why you have to read many case briefs to get to know about more matters.

For that purpose, here some case brief examples for you to read for your personal-study time. And for each case, you should take notes on the important points. Also, you shouldn’t wait for your professor to give the task before you write your version of case brief. Write down some for practice, so when the time comes for your professor to give you this task, then you wouldn’t get flustered.