Reading case summary books instead of casebooks Forum

[FuturePanhandler]

I've seen a few threads about case summaries, but most of them ended up discussing which case summaries to use and not the merits of using summaries over the actual casebook.

I've seen a lot of people talk about how cases largely don't come up on exams, therefore they don't read casebooks thoroughly. If that is the case would it be better to just get keyed case summaries from the beginning and not even bother with casebooks?

[thesealocust]

This is a tricky one.

First, importantly, the exam is about nothing but the cases. The trick is that you need to use the law and reasoning from the cases to apply to a new fact pattern, you do not need to recite the facts or procedural history or anything. So it's true that cases are inefficient, since they're long and filled with unimportant details.

Having said that, based on my experience at school and working with other students over the years, I strongly advocate reading cases for the first year. Relying entirely on summaries/supplements/old outlines can absolutely work in theory, but it's a pretty big risk to start there. One important reason is that each professor emphasizes and covers different aspects of cases, and the exam is testing nothing but the law as taught my your professor. If they don't line up, and you don't realize it, you can tank your grade without even knowing why.

In addition, there is value to wading through cases and trying to extract the rules. It's a basic and important lawyering skill. That's not to say it's an especially difficult skill to pick up, but you'll be short changing yourself by skipping it entirely.

Knowing that cases are overly dense is still useful. It means that you know you're reading them for rules, reasoning, and policy, and you know you have to be ready to apply all of that to new fact patterns on the exam. You'll can time by not obsessing over facts or procedural history or old cases that aren't good law anymore.

[FuturePanhandler]

This is a tricky one.

First, importantly, the exam is about nothing but the cases. The trick is that you need to use the law and reasoning from the cases to apply to a new fact pattern, you do not need to recite the facts or procedural history or anything. So it's true that cases are inefficient, since they're long and filled with unimportant details.

Having said that, based on my experience at school and working with other students over the years, I strongly advocate reading cases for the first year. Relying entirely on summaries/supplements/old outlines can absolutely work in theory, but it's a pretty big risk to start there. One important reason is that each professor emphasizes and covers different aspects of cases, and the exam is testing nothing but the law as taught my your professor. If they don't line up, and you don't realize it, you can tank your grade without even knowing why.

In addition, there is value to wading through cases and trying to extract the rules. It's a basic and important lawyering skill. That's not to say it's an especially difficult skill to pick up, but you'll be short changing yourself by skipping it entirely.

Knowing that cases are overly dense is still useful. It means that you know you're reading them for rules, reasoning, and policy, and you know you have to be ready to apply all of that to new fact patterns on the exam. You'll can time by not obsessing over facts or procedural history or old cases that aren't good law anymore.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Did you find that you were able to pick out the rules, reasoning, policy, etc. without getting bogged down without trouble early on, or does it take some getting used to?

[thesealocust]

It definitely takes getting used to - my early "case briefs" were a mess. Another reason to go through the pain of case reading IMO, if you get to the point where you can read a case efficiently and extract the rule, that's a good sign that you're (pardon the cliche) learning to think like a lawyer.

[FuturePanhandler]

It definitely takes getting used to - my early "case briefs" were a mess. Another reason to go through the pain of case reading IMO, if you get to the point where you can read a case efficiently and extract the rule, that's a good sign that you're (pardon the cliche) learning to think like a lawyer.

Ok. Thanks for the insight!

[tomwatts]

Learning to read cases is a big part of what you're doing in 1L. I think — and there are people who disagree with me, but I still think this — that it's valuable and shouldn't be shortchanged, at least at first.

Also, it depends on what your prof tests. I definitely had a prof who tested on every last detail of the reasoning of cases, so it really did matter that you read them, not just for the class discussion, but for the exam. I had other profs who didn't care in the least about the details of the cases and really just wanted you to know summary of the facts + outcome (and the "holding," to the extent that that's different from the preceding).