Please tell us what year you are in, what brought you to law school and one more fun fact about you!

The ability to self-assess accurately is critical in law school. Attached you will find a document called an 'exam wrapper.' I encourage you to open it, look at one of your final exams from last semester, and go through this checklist to find opportunity. For our new 1L students, this is the end of the movie, where you want to end up. So take a look at it like a preview to the end of a movie, then deconstruct it. Law school is about understanding the rules so you can objectively get repeatable outcomes with different sets of facts. What are the steps you will need to take to be able to read a case, extract the rules, understand them, then apply to them different fact patterns? Not easy! If you don't have a system in place, create one before the semester begins! If you have a good system, share it with us!

What is a case brief? A case brief is a document that you draft to summarize the important points, a.k.a. the relevant points of a case in order for you to extract a rule from it and to discuss it in class if you are called. Some professors will require you to do it in a certain way. I am generally a believer that you should do it in a way that works for you as long as it includes the essential ingredients.. When I read a case when I’m generally looking for is of course understanding of the facts and what happened. Then I take a look at the legal issue the court must decide in order to resolve that legal problem. There are always multiple legal issues in the cases however, for class purposes, you generally focus on one or two relevant issues. This means if you’re reading the case for contracts, you don’t focus so much on the issues related to proper law, for example. Once you understand the facts, you have your relevant rules, now is the important part, the courts analysis where we apply these particular side effects to the objective reputable rules. An analysis of the law as applied to the facts should render an outcome that is objectively verifiable. This is what the court does during their analysis within the case.. It is always important to know important statues, and precedent that guide the decision, especially as it pertains to the gray area. I find it a lot of law students confuse IRAC with case briefing. You will see that in most of the cases you read the judges are using IRAC because they are writing in an organized form that takes them from the issue to the rule to the analysis to the conclusion. A case brief is our summary of reading that case. A case brief is not the same as IRAC. Where IRAC is needed is for your output on an exam; you use your case brief to gather the rules to create an outline for you to learn the rules and apply them apply them objectively moving forward to create repeatable results. We will be adding to the 1L skills classroom and more relevant posts as we gear up for the fall semester!

Interesting in learning more about family law?

Foothill Athlete Management is a new growing sports agency creating space in sports for college recruiting but helps athletes develop as whole humans through the pros. They just became WNBA agents! Any future sports law attorneys or agents out there that also enjoy doing content? We need an intern for the summer/fall to help with social media outreach and content creation. Message me for for info or email [email protected]!