What They Are: Case briefs are, literally, briefs distilling cases that appear in your casebooks. In fact, commercial case brief study aids are keyed directly to casebooks for your courses, so these study aids precisely track the cases as they appear in your casebooks. At their best, they allow students to boil down cases to their essence. In that sense, they can speed up the process of reading and taking notes about cases. Students should be careful, however, not to substitute reading commercial case briefs for reading cases themselves, or using commercial case briefs in place of creating their own.
When To Buy: The best time to buy case briefs is during the first part of a semester (August 15-October 1 in the Fall, or January 2-February 15 in the Spring), so you can use them as your read your cases throughout the semester.
