Law students may be asked write a legal brief.
A legal brief includes the details of the outcome of a legal case. A student legal brief is often completed by students who are studying law. While it also includes the summary and perhaps analysis of a legal case, the format can vary slightly, depending on the instructions of your professor. Successful completion of your professor's instructions and the details of the legal case will demonstrate that you will be able to write a legal brief as a professional once you earn your degree.
Instructions
1. Refer to the specific instructions of your professor. Although guidelines for writing legal briefs are available, your professor's specific instructions should always be followed first.
2. Add the case name to your legal brief. The case name is generally the last names of the two parties involved in the case, or the name of the company, organization or institution.
3. Give details about the procedural background of the case. This involves listing the roles of each party involved in the case. Within state and federal court systems, the second party listed in the case name is the defendant, while the other is the government in most cases. In other cases, the first party is the appellant or petitioner who is seeking action against the second party, known as the appellee or respondent. Background also includes the courts that are involved with the case and any appeals that have been made.
4. Take a few paragraphs to include the facts of the case. The facts include evidence that has been presented, facts stated by expert witnesses and those that are not disputed by either party involved.
5. Write out the legal question for the case. The legal question is what the court system must answer. For example, the legal question might be whether or not a tenant or the landlord is responsible for paying for damage in an apartment. Once you write the question, write what the decision for the case was. This is a summary of the outcome of the case.
6. Put together the reasoning for the outcome of the case as you see it. Explain which arguments, evidence and testimonies justify the final decision. Then, talk about the results of the court's decision. Using the previously mentioned example, if the court decided in favor of the tenant, then the result might be the landlord paying for the damage.
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