This document discusses legal briefs and summarizing court cases. It defines a legal brief as a short summary of a case and notes they can be made by law students or attorneys. For attorneys, a brief outlines a client's grievance and which laws should prevail in their lawsuit. For law students, a brief summarizes a case from inception to judgment, discussing the court's opinion and legal interpretations. Effective briefs are written in past tense, contain a point-wise sequence of events, and include the key parts of a case like parties, citation, facts, issues, holding, and reasoning.

1. Legal Briefing & Summarizing

2. Definition and types
• A Legal brief is a short summary of a case.
• It is of two types:
Made by a Law StudentMade by an Attorney

3. Brief: Made by an Attorney
• The attorney, while submitting a motion in front of the
court, makes a brief outline of the grievance suffered by his
/ her client.
• Also mentions, under application which acts, his/her case
should prevail over the other party (or parties) to that
lawsuit.
• This is called briefing by Attorney, done to save time of the
court.

4. Briefing by a Law Student:
Summary of a judgment
• Typically this is used for more effective self-
study.
• This document contains a reduced and
summarized form of court opinion.
• Summarizes the trail of a case from its
inception through its judgement.
• Mainly discusses the court’s opinion,
interpretation of laws, and application of the
same in deciding the judgement.

5. Briefing: Points to remember
• A brief is written in 3rd person and in Past Tense.
• Should contain point-wise sequence of events. Just
outline of the events are required.
• In case of Lawyer’s briefing, events that happened,
and action desired from court, are presented in
Argument form.

6. Briefing: Points to remember
• The writer of the brief signs in the end, with a
mention of date.
• Since a brief is not a letter, we do not write “Yours
Sincerely” in the end.

7. Parts of a Brief
1. Name of the case
This includes name of the two parties involves. It also mentions
the name of the court, and the date of the judgment.
2. Citation
This is a reference to the online or print medium where the case
is published. It allows the readers of the brief to cross check the
facts presented.

8. Parts of a Brief
3. Prior Proceedings
This is an optional element. If the case has involved multiple courts before
coming to the final court, a point-wise summary of the judgments given by
them is required.
4. Facts
This includes a brief statement of what has exactly happened. An outlining of
incidents, leading to the filing of case in the court is mentioned.
5. Issue of the case
The argument of the case, on which deliberation happens in court.

9. Format of a Brief: Things to include
6. Holding
This refers to the position taken by the court. Holding simply
means whether the court found a person guilty or otherwise.
7. Reasoning, or Rationale
This includes application of law to every single points of the case,
to support the Courts argument.
8. Summary
The student states his / her opinion about the act or judgement.

11. Example:
Case brief of Vishakha Judgement

12. Parties
Court
Date of Judgement
Citation
FACTS

16. 5) Rationale: The Laws working behind the Judgement

17. Your take on
the Act /
Judgement