5.3 What is a case brief for?

There are various contexts in which you will want or need to prepare a case brief. First, writing case briefs will help you with your own study of the law. We recommend that you prepare case briefs for all the prescribed reading cases in your law subjects. This will help you to understand the law much better than just reading the cases and will come in handy when it is time to revise for exams.

Second, you may find that when you enter the legal profession you will be asked to provide a case brief (or case summary or case note). This could happen in various professional contexts. You may be asked to provide a case brief as part of assisting a more senior lawyer in relation to a particular case. Or your supervisor might ask for a case brief to help them keep up to date with recent developments in the law. You may also be asked to provide case summaries for educational material for clients in your law firm’s client newsletter. (Note that the different audiences would entail different approaches to style and content, since you would not want to present a lawyer’s summary to a lay client.)