A law school outlinefrom case briefs to the outline you take into the exam

Method

1. 1

   Keep briefing the cases yourself

   Briefing is how you learn to read a case, and you need the brief in front of you when you are called on in class. Keep writing them before each class, wherever you write now: a word processor, a notes app, a folder of text files. Give every brief the same headings: Facts, Procedural history, Issue, Rule, Holding, Reasoning, and one of your own, Why it is in the casebook.

   Put the full citation on the first line. Write in your own words; the casebook’s notes and questions belong to its authors, and a brief you copied teaches you nothing.

2. 2

   Let your assistant file the briefs by topic

   Every few weeks, give your assistant the briefs and the syllabus: attach the files in Claude or ChatGPT, or point a local client at the folder. Ask it to make a shelf called Contracts — fall 2026 in know.sh, a document per syllabus topic (Formation: offer and acceptance, Consideration and its substitutes, Defences, Interpretation and the parol evidence rule, Performance and breach, Remedies) and a finding per brief in the right topic.

   Tell it how: title each finding with the case name and the idea it stands for, “Lucy v. Zehmer — the objective theory of assent”, because the index learns case names from finding titles and first lines; file each as Evidence; keep your headings and your wording; add a link to the opinion as a source. Forty briefs become forty findings in one sitting.

3. 3

   Fix it up in the editor

   Open each topic and press Edit. Check every brief against your own file: the assistant should have moved your words, not improved them, and a brief filed under the wrong topic goes to the right one. Drag the findings into the order the syllabus teaches them, and mark the cases the professor lingers on as Key.

   After class, add what the professor did with the case. Select the passage and leave a Note with the hypothetical — “What if Zehmer had been genuinely drunk?” — and what the class concluded. A hypothetical with no settled answer becomes a finding of its own, filed as a Question, to take to office hours.

4. 4

   Grow the overview into the outline

   At the end of each topic, ask your assistant for a skeleton: “Using know.sh, read the briefs in Formation: offer and acceptance on my Contracts shelf and put, in the overview, a heading for each doctrine they illustrate, with the cases that belong under it, linked to their briefs. Do not write rule statements.”

   Then press Edit and write the outline under those headings: the rule in your own words, its elements as a numbered list, the exceptions, and the cases that show it. That writing is the studying. The links show a preview on hover, so while you revise the rule you can check the facts without leaving the page.

5. 5

   Check the outline against the briefs

   An outline drifts. A rule you wrote in October gets reworded in December until it no longer says what the case held. Ask your assistant to read a topic’s overview against its briefs and list every rule that a brief does not support, every case in the outline with no brief behind it, and every citation that differs between the two. It can leave a proposed note on each, with Accept and Dismiss.

   Treat that list as leads and check each one yourself. When a rewrite goes wrong, open Revisions on the document: every version is there, marked as made by you or by an assistant, with Restore.

6. 6

   Quiz yourself on rules, not on facts

   Ask your assistant for a quiz on a topic: “Using know.sh, make a quiz of eight questions on the rule statements in Remedies on my Contracts shelf: elements, exceptions and which case illustrates each. No questions about case facts.” It writes the questions with know.sh’s quiz tools, each citing the brief it came from, and you take the quiz in know.sh or the iOS app.

   Without that instruction, quizzes drift towards case trivia (“What did Zehmer write the contract on?”), which the exam will not ask. The quiz comes back under Revisit after 3, 7 or 21 days, depending on your score.

7. 7

   Share a topic with your study group

   If your study group divides the outline, press Share on your topic to make a read-only link. Set a password and an expiry date after the exam, and copy the link when it appears; it is shown only once. Readers see the outline and the briefs, not your notes or highlights. Leave out any finding you would rather keep to yourself from its own page.

   The group cannot comment on the link. Their corrections reach you in the group chat or in person, and you file them. Check your school’s honour code first: some professors forbid shared outlines for their exams.