Case Briefing: The Four Step Process

Step Two (Continued): Brief the Case Using This Books Case Briefing Format
    Prof's comments: This section is for you to fill in during class.  While in class be listening for the Prof's spin on the holding or the policy.  What does she think of the policy?  The case?  The idea here is that Prof's like to hear their words recited back to them on the final exams.  There's a saying in law school: students who accurately quote the law get C's, students who accurately quote the law and the professor get B's, students who quote the professor, get A's.  As Gerry Spence stated in his book The Making of a Country Lawyer,
   
    At the end of my freshman year in the spring of 1950, I was at the top of my class.  I had stumbled onto an easier way to score high grades than exercising the under-brain.  I learned that a person didn't have to explain the law to the professors, not really.  A fellow didn't even have to think like a lawyer.  All he had to do was merely think like the professor -- tell him what he wanted to hear, play back his top-ten legal tunes, laud his most precious jurisprudential scenarios.  He was not interested in original thought, in a student's creativity, in legal insight or judicial wisdom.  He appreciated those who appreciated him, who grasped his deepest meaning, revered his most profound pontifications and stored them for eternity in the infinite folds of our cerebral cortex.  Those who could only quote the law got C's, but those who could quote the professor--ah, what exquisite intellects, what eloquent words on the page!  Those were the few, the rare, the A students, and I was one of them.