Importance of Briefing

While doing legal research, you will find briefing cases to be absolutely essential to gaining an understanding of case law. Simply reading cases fosters passive participation and retention. In other words, you can read a case over and over without gaining any real understanding of thee court’s reasoning. But if you put pen to paper and translate what you have read into your own words, you become actively engaged. The active engagement dramatically enhances your ability to critically reflect on the case. Writing forces the brain to engage in a creative process. In this process, you begin to see connections and interrelationships, to ask critical questions, and to postulate possible extensions of legal principles. Without engaging in such a critical thinking process, you might never get past a superficial understanding of a case. You might also find that you are confused or do not really understand what the court is saying. To better understand the difference between active and passive learning, reflect for a moment on the difference between your preparation for a multiple-choice exam and your preparation for an essay exam. Is it not true that your understanding of a subject need be only fairly superficial for you to pass a typical multiple-choice test? Do you not have to be much better prepared and possess a much higher level of understanding to pass an essay exam on the same material? By the same token, reading a case several times may allow you to pass a superficial multiple-choice test on it, but writing a case brief better prepares you for an in-depth essay exam.