Louise O`Keefe was eight years old when she was sexually assaulted by her manager. It took him 40 years and a long legal battle with the Irish state to get justice. This is their story. Amal* was three years old when she was raped by a neighbour in the Delhi slum where she lived with her family. What followed was brutal cross-examination by defense lawyers, staggering incompetence of the legal system, and extensive medical procedures. Her mother, a 24-year-old construction worker from Bihar, fought tirelessly for justice for her daughter in a case that made its way to the Delhi High Court.* The name of the child victim was changed to protect his identity. Remember that the purpose of a brief is to remind you of the important details that make the case significant in terms of law. It will be a reference tool when you are trained by a teacher and will be a learning aid as you prepare for exams. A briefing is also like a piece of the puzzle. What should you highlight? Similar to comments, the best parts of the case that should be highlighted are those that present the information needed for your briefing, such as facts, problem, attitude, and reasoning. Experiment if necessary, but try to choose a color palette at the beginning of the semester and stick to it. This way, when you go back to the first cases of the semester, you won`t be confused with multiple color schemes.
The basic sections of a case for which you should consider giving a different color are: Essentially, a case study is a well-written explanation of how a particular client won their case with the help of a particular law firm. Each case study should examine how the legal problem arose, what steps the law firm took to assist the client, and how the case was successfully resolved. Unlike comments, highlighting provides an efficient way to color code by color, making case reference even easier. In addition, highlighters are particularly useful for delimiting entire sections with parentheses. These parentheses allow you to color case code without highlighting all text, leaving the most important sentences intact for more detailed markup or underline. Many of you probably already read with a pencil or pen, but if you don`t, now is the time to get used to it. The cases are so dense and full of information that you will spend a lot of time re-reading the cases to find what you need. An effective way to shorten this time is to comment on the margins of the casebook. Your pencil (or pencil) will be one of your best friends while you read a case. It allows you to mark the different sections (such as facts, procedural history, or conclusions) so that you can clear your mind of thoughts and provide an invaluable resource in briefing and review. The elements of the briefing create the unique shape and colors of the piece, and in combination with other pieces, the common law image takes shape. A well-constructed information session saves you a lot of time by not having to come back to the case to remember important details and by making it easier to put the pieces of the common law puzzle together.
Today, several faculty initiatives produce case studies at Harvard Law School. Also, always check that the information you contain complies with all court orders, client agreements, permissions, and other legal documents before you start writing. Best for: workshop-based case studies, 1Ls, JD programs, advocacy, problem solving, free materials Choose a color for each section of the case and use that color only when highlighting the section of the case for that color. Consider using yellow for the text you highlight most often. Since yellow is the brightest, you might be inclined to use yellow for conclusions to make them stand out the most. However, if you do, you`ll exhaust your other colors much faster than yellow, forcing you to buy a full set of new highlighters when a single color runs out, as colors like green aren`t sold separately. If you use yellow instead for a more frequently highlighted section like analysis, you only need to replace your yellow marker one by one when it`s time to replace your yellow marker. In my personal experience with one of the authors, the sections of the cases that seemed to require the most attention were the In our latest case study on the stories behind strategic disputes over children`s rights, we explore several challenges to Russia`s “gay propaganda” laws. These laws, adopted under the guise of protecting children to silence public debate and positive messages on LGBT issues, effectively deny freedom of expression and access to information on sexual and gender diversity. The problem-solving workshop material immerses students in the types of real-world problems that practicing lawyers face on a daily basis. The case studies present the problem to be solved and provide readings on related theories, excerpts from relevant laws and other illustrative documents such as contracts and leases. Students complete teamwork and exercises that include tasks such as writing a press release as general counsel of a troubled toy company; as an employee of a law firm, determine the possible actions available to a client who is facing a change in harassment; or, as the new Assistant U.S.
Attorney in New York, decide whether and how someone should be charged with real estate fraud under section 8. Professors Todd Rakoff and Joseph Singer lead the PSW teaching group, which develops new materials each year. The Langdellian case method, which focused on “a retrospective view of the facts,” did not teach critical problem-solving skills. What law school needed, according to Minow and Rakoff, was a new way to simulate “legal imagination.” What facts are relevant to include in an information session? You need to state the facts necessary to remember the story. If you forget the story, you won`t remember how the law was enforced in this case. You must also state the facts that are decisive for the decision in the case. For example, if the fact that a car is white is a deciding factor in the case, the pleading should indicate that it is a white car and not just a car. To the extent that procedural history helps you remember the case or plays an important role in the bottom line, you should also include these facts. The process of setting up the deal in your own words requires you to digest the material, while comments and highlighting can be done much more passively.
To this end, Harvard Law School introduced the Problem Solving Workshop, a mandatory first-year course that teaches problem-solving skills through the case study method. The problem-solving workshop encourages the use of case studies throughout the HLS program. There are several tactics for writing a case study as part of your legal services marketing strategy. The following tips can help you move in the right direction. Not all of these sections require a distinct color. You may find that the combination of facts and history of the proceeding or topics and participations works better. Also, as mentioned above, some sections may not warrant highlighting in all cases (e.g., dictations probably don`t need to be highlighted unless they`re particularly important). If you decide that a single color is all you need, then stick to one, but if you`re highlighting a lot of text from many different sections, reconsider using at least a few different colors. Highlighters highlight text, but only when used correctly.
Using many colors allows you to highlight more text without compromising the efficiency of the highlighter. Three to four colors offer a decent color variation without the hassle of handling too many markers. A question mark over the medical documents of an intersex baby in Kenya has nearly condemned a child to a life without medical care, schooling or a passport. The child`s mother challenged the forged document and took the case to Kenya`s Supreme Court. Now that we`ve covered the basics of reading, commenting, highlighting, and briefing a case, you can start practicing. Keep in mind the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter as you discuss the four topics covered in the rest of this book. If you are experiencing difficulties, refer to this chapter to help you master the case study method and the art of applying the common law. Cummins & White makes it easy for potential customers to access case studies directly from their landing page, as you`ll see in the example below. Robert Half Legal eDiscovery Services Recovers Missing Data and Helps Protect Businesses from Legal Sanctions The previous section described the parts of a folder to make it easier to read and identify the relevant information you will use to create your submissions.