Side-Bar Method Intro To Law v1.1

VERSION 1.
THE SIDE-BAR METHOD

A FIRST COURSE
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THE SIDE-BAR METHOD
The course deals with a wide array of topic areas necessary to succeed within the Side-Bar
methodology, allowing you to excel in your law classes at your school, get high grades on your
law school exams, and pass the bar exam.
Beyond the basics, the tools this course teaches students starts with the required critical
thinking skills needed by the student. This is accomplished by breaking down basic principles
of common law by their elements and then via hypothetical examples demonstrate how to
issue spot and analyze those issues from various points of view.
The course then continues into a presentation of Side-Bar’s special memory techniques and
challenges students in developing these techniques, as they will be used for their specialized
case briefs. In this regard, students will be taught how to brief a case the Side-Bar way for
purposes of the memory technique. However, students will also be shown how to brief a case
the traditional way, via the IRAC (issue, rule, analysis, conclusion) method.
The course concludes by bringing these tools together as the methodology for the students’
path of proceeding to their regular courses. The Side-Bar method of teaching a course consists
of either three or two parts, depending upon the course. Please note that all national courses
taught by ABA schools and tested on the MBE contain three parts. The three parts of each
course consists of: 1) the cases to be read and briefed; 2) case briefs with the rules of law; and
3) a course outline together with snapshot case briefs.
In addition, all three-part courses provide a separate section concerning acing your law school
essay exam in that subject. This includes not only how to approach and analyze the law school
essay exam, but practice questions and model answers which comprise typical law school
essay exams. Please note that Bar exam essays, although similar to law school exam essays,
are different in some respects, and thus, our Bar Review courses deal with these differences
and provides a template to follow for every national subject tested which will allow you to
write successful Bar Exam essays.
Also note, those courses which have specialized terms, those terms are provided, with their
definitions, in the course materials. Lastly, in Constitutional Law, unlike many other law
schools, the student is provided a full text of the Constitution for reading before beginning the
course.
1/4/2018 the side-bar method 1

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INTRODUCTION, ORIENTATION & ANALYSIS BASICS© 1

This course is divided into the following sections:
(Please read the entirety of each section in the order presented)
Getting Started
Considerations
Analysis Basics
Memory Techniques
Case Briefing
Bringing It All Together
IRAC
Conclusion
Advice
1 This Introductory Course, and all our law courses, as with the Baby Bar and Full Bar Review Courses,
contain legally proprietary material. They are for your use only. As a condition of your purchasing this
or any of our courses, you may not share any portion of these courses or any of these materials with
anyone, whether for profit or for no profit. The method of teaching is patent pending and all the
materials have been copyrighted. The proprietary nature of the materials will remain attached to
them, together with your obligations not to share them, after you use them.

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Welcome to Side Bar!
First, the Side Bar method of teaching is not the traditional way of learning the law. It is very
different.
In this Introductory course, you will be learning more than just how to approach law school,
the law, and how to become a lawyer. You are also going to learn a whole new set of life skills
that you will be able to take with you anywhere and apply in all your life’s situations.
You will learn a new way to see problems, approach them, analyze them, and solve them.
These will be very valuable tools that you will carry in your tool box for easily mastering law
school, and be able to carry into other aspects of your life.
Obviously, you will be learning the basic rules of law, how to read it and analyze it. But that is
where it begins. Because you are going to learn a whole new way to think and remember
large amounts of information. The best way I can describe what you should expect, is by way
of analogy. That is military boot camp.
The clear majority of us, when we are growing up, are not taught to think the way the military
teaches recruits. I do not mean the obvious of teaching the art of battle, but of changing the
recruit’s mindset from thinking about oneself as an individual, into one of working as a team
and protecting your buddy.
Military boot camp takes a person and completely transforms that person into something
he/she was not before. Boot camp provided that person a whole new set of skills he or she
would probably never have been able learn unless they went to boot camp.
You will have a similar transformation in thinking when learning the Side Bar method and
applying it to our courses and the Bar review. Our method is not taught in other law school
courses or Bar review courses and is patent pending.
Of course, you will find out students attending the law schools throughout the country are
reading the same cases and learning the same rules of law which you are offered in Side Bar.
However, unlike traditional law schools, here you will have guidance, structure, and a new
process.

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Traditional law schools typically leave much of the structure of how to learn up to the student.
That is probably why there is an almost 50 percent dropout rate of first year law students
either out of frustration or failing grades. Here we will add structure to the chaos and guide
you through the experience which will allow you to learn more. We will show you how to
study and learn smarter, faster, and easier.
A little more specifically, traditionally law schools simply dump a ton of cases on you and
expect you to brief them (without knowing even how to brief a case), and those cases have a
lot of legal terms unknown to most of humankind which must be looked up in a law dictionary
while you are trying to read, absorb, brief, and remember the case. This is a monumental task,
a very large frustration for most students, and a cause/reason for a high drop-out rate of first
year law students, and a continued significant drop out rate in the second year.
In fact, way back in the 1970’s there was a movie which depicted some of the chaos created in
law schools, which was aptly named “The Paper Chase.” The Contracts professor depicted in
the film was and is still typical of the traditional law school professor for first and second year
students. Fortunately, here, you will not have that chaos, and we give you a somewhat
different, streamlined, and proficient method of learning the material.
For context, more recently, most law schools will at least give the student a framework of how
to brief a case via the IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) method. And some schools will
now even tell the students that they need to develop course outlines from their case briefs.
But, in the past schools did not do that, and today, even with that minimal information,
students are left in the dark.
As a result, companies sprang up which published “canned” case briefs keyed to traditional
law school books, and separate standardized course outlines, also sometimes keyed to law
school books. Traditional law schools, then and now, tell students not to purchase these
materials.
There is a very good reason traditional law schools tell students not to purchase these
materials…. it is because when students are given all the material on a platter, the students no
longer must do any work, concerning the material, making it even more difficult the learn.
With that, students are left with simply memorizing the material via rote methods. Hence,
students are still left in the dark as they have no idea of how to analyze the law. By way of
example, just look at the very low Bar pass rates of the California “correspondence” schools
which relied upon this method.

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As you progress through this course, you will recognize these problems, but the most glaring
one to mention now is even if a new student knows how to brief a case and develop his own
course outline there are going to be large gaps in his or her material. That issue is based on
simple math, because it is impossible for a student to brief 100% of the cases in the case book,
so the professors assign about 65% of them. In addition, given the convoluted nature of how
some judges write, it is not always clear just which rule of law the professor and the State Bar
Examiners want you to get from that case (there are usually several rules in a single case).
Then there are with some courses (most notably Real Property and Wills & Trusts) the unique
lexicon not contained in Webster‘s and mostly unrecognizable to mere mortals. We eliminate
these and other problems with the old way of doing things.
As you progress with this Introductory course, you will discover that we have thrown the old
model out. We have a very different program, and although it is centered around case law, the
methods we have devised are designed to give you the ability to succeed. No other law school
provides you the program we have, and after you finish this Introductory Course, you will
know just how much better our system is compared to the old.
In addition, concerning taking the Baby Bar and the Bar exam, yes, there are courses given by
several companies which help prepare you to take the Bar exam and according to reviews we
read on the Internet, some are considered more effective than others. We here at Side Bar
also provide the Baby Bar and full Bar review courses within Side Bar at a lower cost than the
other providers and, here again we use a different method (in terms of memory technique and
exam approach) than any other review course being offered.
In sum, unlike any other law school past or current, we give you the formula, framework, and
all the course materials, together with a new enhanced teaching method, which includes
advanced memory techniques, all designed to not only make your learning experience
efficient and less burdensome than traditional law schools, but to also provide you with a
greater opportunity for success.
To get you started on your way, I will be describing how to approach the work, how to break
down and analyze issues, the significance of case law and statutes, how to read and analyze
case law, how to brief a case the Side Bar way, how to apply a traditional law school analysis
technique called the IRAC method (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion), an overview of the court
system and our approach on how to more easily store and recall the massive amount of
information you will be required to have at the tips of your figures during tests.

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Later, incorporated within each course curriculum we will show you how to approach, break
down and write law school essay exams. The Bar review courses will do the same for the Bar
exam questions, however, because the questions given on Bar exams are a bit different than
law school exam questions and require a different approach, we have provided a tried and
tested approach for the Bar questions. For now, you need the basics, as first you need to learn
how to crawl. Then later you can learn how to walk and then run.
One last primer… some of you may be wondering already where the video lecturer (or live
lecturer) is who would be delivering this information to me? This is another part of our system
which is different from all others teaching law courses, other educational courses, and Bar
review courses. We do not give lectures, there is no video and there is good reason for this.
Some of you may recall going to class, sitting down and the teacher blab on and on about this,
that and the other. You sat there soaking it in, right? No, by passively listening, even if you did
not doze off or entered into a day dream, you were only hearing and getting at most 25% of
what was dished out in the lecture.
That is because you are in the passive mode, you are not engaged. The same thing happens
whether you are live in the classroom or watching and listening to a video lecture online.
However, when you are actively engaged, you have no choice but to be involved with the
material, and when you are involved with the material, you hear it, take it in and remember it
much better than watching a lecture.
You will understand this better when you get into the section within this course about memory
techniques, but for now, let me ask you a question. How many of you have taken a history
course, attended a class concerning an event in history, and then at some other time read a
nonfiction novel which just so happened to deal with the same part of history? I am sure that
has happened to many of you, but I will bet that most, if not all, of you remember what
happened in the book you read, but could not remember much if anything from the school
lecture.
That is due to what we call the living picture memory. For example, think about something
you did many years in the past. You remember it in your mind’s eye and the memory is in the
form of a picture. That is because you experienced the event as opposed to passively
watching a film. That is not to say that when we watch films, we do not remember them, of
course we do, but not as frequently, easily, or as permanently as if we lived an experience.

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The easiest, fastest, and most effective way to create a long-lasting memory which can be
quickly recalled is by living or experiencing the event. Knowing this, we integrate a new
learning memory system into our way of teaching the law, showing you how to experience the
event (like when you read a book and get engrossed in it), which will allow you to store large
amounts of the information you will need to know, without you having to spend hundreds of
extra hours in the old routine (still used at law schools) of rote memorization.
In addition, although none of you have practiced law yet, when you do, you will be confronted
with reading cases. There will be no professor giving you a lecture on the case you are
working on. When you are there, you will find that because you are reading and engaged
actively, you will remember much more of these cases and what you were engaged in, versus
sitting back and enjoying the view.
So, none of our classes have any video lectures. Video lectures are passive and in our opinion
a waste of your time. We want to see that your time is utilized efficiently and that you retain
the maximum amount of material in the least amount of time.
Along this same line, unlike some outside law review courses, we do not give you any flow
charts, Venn Diagrams, spread sheets, pie charts or any graphics at all. In the real world, the
law and its analysis is a science of words; not charts or graphics.
The application of the law, whether it is within practicing, or using your education in other
ways described above, will also be a world of words. We do not teach math and statistics. We
teach the law, and how to break it down (or any other problem) analyze it and provide a
conclusion. Except for the rare occasion of a simple math problem, this is all done with words.
So, we teach with words in the same way you will encounter issues in law school and after you
graduate.
Considerations
Have you ever wondered about what is meant by the “Bar” exam? Why do they call it the Bar
exam and not the law exam or some such? It’s not like you are learning to mix drinks. Well
the word is steeped in tradition and must do with who has access and who does not. I am
sure many of you have been in a court room, and if not you have certainly seen them in
movies and television. Look at the layout. The courtroom is basically divided in two parts.
The back part is where the spectators sit. The front part is where the judge and the lawyers
sit. The two halves are separated by a “bar.” Some might call it a fence, but it is a fence with a
bar on top of it. Only those who are lawyers or who are the judge or the litigants and jury are

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allowed on that side of the “bar.” That is where the term came from. If you want access to
that side of the bar, you must successfully complete law school and pass the “bar” exam.
The road through law school is paved with good intentions. Victory here is never absolute.
There always is one more case you could’ve read. Another source you could’ve checked. An
additional hour you could’ve studied. There probably is not a lawyer alive who would not have
done something different in law school to improve his or her performance.
In law practice, you develop your skills as a lawyer through experience. If you are a trial lawyer,
you argue cases in court. If you are an estate planning lawyer, you draft increasingly complex
instruments. As a new lawyer, your mistakes will be corrected by senior lawyers, judges, and
your own desire to improve. Competence is a constantly receding goal.
In law school, you only get one chance. You do not have the luxury of years to hone skills
needed for success. Here are a few suggestions to help you on your way.
First, time management is the most pervasive problem you will encounter in law school. Not
only is the work voluminous, but also the need to make choices is inevitable. Your ability to get
a grip on your schedule and discipline yourself to establish a flexible but workable routine will
have a major impact on your success.
Procrastination is a common mistake made by law student. Choices overwhelm them they
must make. They are over committed. All these difficulties are related. That is when we
procrastinate. A way to get around this is think of yourself as being hired to do the job of the
law student. Get yourself out of the student mentality and think of your job as obtaining a
legal education.
Make a commitment to yourself that you will spend enough hours per week studying and
going over the materials. Then give yourself two weeks of vacation per year and pay yourself
for your work. For example, once a month reward yourself with some treat (like dinner out) as
compensation from for doing your job.
Another technique for managing your time is to establish a weekly schedule. Make sure the
schedule is workable. A third simple device for time management is a daily list. While your
schedule may govern the allocation of major blocks of time during the day, you still must find a
way to deal with the urgencies of the day. A written list helps with that.

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The fourth and most important part of time management is your ability to focus. You will have
to learn, retain, and quickly recall massive amounts of information. Of course, we present the
material to you in a new system designed to allow you to learn this material efficiently and
effectively and we give you proven methods to easily retain it, but it will still require you to
focus.
Meaning, that is, at any time you are reading any of the course materials and you find that
your mind starts to wander, that signifies that you are tired. Thus, when you are tired, any
time you put in on the course materials, is wasted time because you will not learn or retain a
good portion of it of it.
If your mind starts to wander, take a break…. a real break (meaning no answering texts, emails
etc.). Maybe take a power nap or take some time to meditate. The key is to be refreshed so
your mind can absorb the material. You want to be re-charged so you are back into the mind
set of being focused on the material before you.
Being focused is the key. So, let me say, that although we are providing you with a system and
methods whereby you will have a much easier and more efficient way of learning the course
materials as compared to traditional schools, our methods still require you to be focused and
motivated to achieve success. Therefore, if you are not totally interested and committed to
wanting to learn the material, your subconscious will disengage you, and no matter how good
our system is, you will not be able to learn what you need to learn to succeed. So, if you have
the will, the motivation and remained focused, you will have the highest probability of
succeeding here.
As a small interjection, please do not attempt to review and engage in any course materials
while under the influence of any amount of alcohol. The two do not mix no matter how much
you think you have control. This is because control has nothing to do with what you are trying
to accomplish here. In this regard, you may come home and feel a need to unwind and have a
beer or maybe even two. Normally that is fine and good with anything you might want to do
in life. However, it will play havoc with your learning the material, as it is a memory killer.
Below, you will be learning memory techniques to be able to easily learn, absorb, retain, and
access the mass amount of material you are required to know and have at your figure tips.
However, alcohol interferes with your brain’s ability to learn, but most importantly retain the
material. In fact, after years of studies, it has been found that when someone attempts to
learn and retain information while under the influence of even the smallest amount of alcohol,

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their ability to retain the information is reduced by 50 percent with the first 3 drinks and 75
percent with the next 3 drinks. However, that does not mean that when you are not in
learning mode, you cannot have a few with your friends to relax now and again. Actually, that
might be a good way to blow off some steam. Just no alcohol while reading and learning.
In addition to time management and being focused, take responsibility for what happens to
you. The victims are almost always more stressed out than those who accept responsibility for
their own decisions because victims don’t have any control over what happens to them. When
you decide that you are in control of your own destiny, you will feel better equipped to deal
with whatever obstacles law school throne throws at you. Also, believe in something. People
who are committed to something are less likely to have strokes, heart attacks and other stress-
related illnesses than those were not. Plus, they make their learning easier. Lastly, don’t
sweat the small stuff and learn to accept the things you cannot change.
Concerning scheduling management, as you may have noticed with this Introduction course,
that there are no chapter assignments (in terms of how much material you cover at a given
time). That will be the same for all the courses you take in Side Bar. The scheduling
management is up to you.
Your scheduling options allow you to take several courses at the same time (the traditional
method) or to take one course at a time (e.g. Torts I & II, then Criminal Law I & II and then
Contracts I & II) for immersion purposes (a non-traditional method).
Although that decision is yours, we recommend the non-traditional method of one course at a
time. It will not only help with your recall (thus cutting down on your study time), but there
are some legal concepts in Torts and Criminal Law in which many first-year law students
conflate. The best way to distinguish them is to take the Torts course first, and then Criminal
Law. In the Criminal Law outline, we will point out where and how to keep the concepts
separate. After your first-year courses, you will be oriented and know what to expect, and at
that time if you feel you wish to take multiple courses simultaneously…. feel free!
At the end of each course, there will be a section on how to approach your exams in that
course. Review the section and use it while writing your answers to the practice questions
provided. After that, review the model answers and compare those to your answers. This will
be an invaluable tool in getting a high grade on your actual law school exam.
Also, with regards to our practice questions for each course, they will be based upon just that
course material (no crossover questions), and therefore these questions are modeled after law

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school questions and not modeled after the questions you will encounter on the Bar exam.
Bar questions and the approach to them are handled in the Bar review courses.
With regards to the structure of the courses, we have broken completely with the traditional
way the law is taught; your regular or basic courses will have three parts. Part One are the
cases for you to brief the Side Bar way; Part Two will be these cases already briefed; and Part
Three will be a course outline, which include additional snapshot cases containing rules of law
you will need to know and further reinforcement. The more advanced courses will usually
have two parts.
Concerning the Bar review courses, you will be given a several levels of increasingly condensed
versions of the rules of law you need to know for each course. You can use this to do practice
drills concerning keeping the rules of law at the tip of your tongue.
Our condensed versions are different from other companies who offer encapsulated versions
of the law. These are super condensed and designed to trip connectors in your mind for fast
recall of what you learned from the basic course materials.
As you commit yourself to the first level of the condensed version, then you go on and start
using an even more condensed version, and then a super condensed version we have, called
the “Bar Bones.” The State Bar Examiners expect that you know the law. So, any time wasted
in attempting to recall it during the exam is to your detriment. If you have the law on the tip
of your tongue, then you will be able to get right into the meat of the exam which is issue
spotting, analysis, and application of the law. This is where the high grades come from.
In addition, you will be given proven strategies on how to break down and take the Bar exam
essay questions. Here, you will learn that there is just so many ways the Bar Examiners can ask
essay questions in each of the subjects, and you will be given outlines of each of those ways
which will show you how to break those questions down and get right into the analysis. Of
course, you will be given many practice essay questions to write and given the model answers
for comparison. Practice makes perfect.
With regards to the multiple-choice questions on the Bar exam, here again we will give you
proven strategies of how to approach the questions, first generally, and then broken down by
subject. In addition, we will give you numerous sample “simulated” practice questions with
answers and explanations.

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However, the actual multiple-choice questions given on the Bar Exam are developed and
owned by the National Conference of Bar (NCBE) Examiners. Thus, although we give you a
head start on practicing the multiple-choice questions in our review course, they are simulated
questions.
Thus, once you finish practicing with our questions, we highly recommend that you purchase
some of the actual past questions and answers from the NCBE and use them as your final
practice tool. You should find that you will be able to answer the actual questions quickly and
with a high degree of accuracy. With that knowledge, you will enter the Bar exam with
confidence. The NCBE can be found online here: http://ncbex.org/exams/mbe/
Analysis Basics
What you will learn in this section will give you the foundational tools to not only start
thinking and analyzing in a logical new way, but provide the basis for what you will need to
approach and analyze law school exams and the State Bar exam.
One thing is for certain with the law and with most things in life, little of it is certain or in other
words black or white. There are many shades of gray. Thus, when you approach a problem,
you want to be able to unlock some of the uncertainty, extract the issues, analyze them, and
thereby provide some interpretation to reach a cogent synopsis with a logical conclusion.
In addition to uncertainty, there are distractions in the law and in life. Right now, I am not
talking about all those general types of distractions (like the dog barking when you are trying
to think a problem through). But purposeful distractions. Life has a way of producing many of
those too. Often, they come in the form of someone playing Chicken Little and claiming the
sky is falling. Only to distract you from the truth so they can get you to do something they
want you to do. In the footnote below 2, I have provided a dramatic example of this type of
2 An interesting quote illustrates this point. Hermann Goering, a Nazi leader and the head of the German
Luftwaffe, said just before he was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials… "Of course the people
don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he
can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people do not want
war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the

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life’s distraction. For you to be successful in business, life or whatever you want to do, you
must be able to recognize the distractions and navigate around them to reach your goal. One
thing to remember in life however, if someone is preaching gloom and doom, it most certainly
is a purposeful distraction for you to look the other way while they do something that they
want to do. Remember that as you move forward and prosper.
The law is no different and presents its own set of distractions. As such, within the confines of
law school, when approaching problems, distractions will be thrown your way inside exam
questions. This is a good training ground to be alert for them, identify them and avoid them.
We will show you how.
However, before we get to that, we have that ominous word hanging out there which is the
“law.” The law is many things, but I need to clarify it for you here, for the specific purpose of
the context within law school and taking your exams.
There are three basic kinds of law which are: Common law, Statutory law, and case law.
Common Law: Common law is the system of deciding cases that originated in England and
which was later adopted in the U.S. Common law is based on precedent (legal principles
developed in earlier case law) instead of statutory laws. It is the traditional law of an area or
region created by judges when deciding individual disputes or cases. Common law changes
over time. The United States is a common law country. In all states except Louisiana, which is
based on Napoleonic code, the common law of England was adopted as the general law of the
state, or varied by statute. Today almost all common law has been enacted into statutes with
modern variations by all the states. Broad areas of the law, such as property, contracts and
torts are traditionally part of the common law. Because these areas of the law are mostly
within the jurisdiction of the states, state courts are the main source of common law. The area
of federal common law is primarily limited to federal issues that have not been addressed by a
statute.
people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist

dictatorship . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That
is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Accordingly, note that in modern times, within the
United States, 94% of all terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by non-Muslims. Think about the
rhetoric.

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Statutory Law:
Statutory means relating to statutes, which are laws enacted by a legislature or other
governing body. The written statutes can be used as authority to govern or resolving the
disputes they address in many cases, rather than case law or judge-made law.
Case Law:
Legal principles enunciated and embodied in judicial decisions that are derived from the
application of areas of law to the facts of individual cases.
As opposed to statutes—legislative acts that proscribe certain conduct by demanding or

prohibiting something or that declare the legality of acts—case law is a dynamic and
constantly developing body of law. Each case contains a portion wherein the facts of the
controversy are set forth as well as the holding and dicta—an explanation of how the judge
arrived at a conclusion. In addition, a case might contain concurring and dissenting opinions of
other judges.
Since the U.S. legal system has a common-law system, higher court decisions are binding on
lower courts in cases with similar facts that raise similar issues. The concept of precedent, or
Stare Decisis, means to follow or adhere to previously decided cases in judging the case at bar.
It means that appellate case law should be considered as binding upon lower courts.
First, as a practical matter, when you are practicing law, the English common law (for the most
part), has been codified into the statutes (both Federal and State). So, in that instance, a
practicing attorney is mostly only concerned with the statutes and the case law.
Many of the statutes are based upon the English common law (except in Louisiana), but
because the English common law is by today’s standards archaic, the codified statutes have

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modified the common law to reflect today’s standards. Later in the course, you will see an
example of this when we analyze the common law definition of burglary.
Concerning case law (unlike law school), a practicing attorney is usually confined (except
where there is no authority) to researching and citing to authority within the jurisdiction in
which he or she is practicing. They are looking, searching, and digging into all materials
available to find that diamond in the rough to support the position of their client.
It is important that you know and understand these distinctions as it will all be a little different
for you in law school, and this distinction will carry itself through into taking the Bar exam.
Here is what I mean by knowing the distinctions. Often you will hear prominent scholars, or
professors or even lawyers say that when you are in law school, you need to read everything
you can get your hands on like Hornbooks, other law treatise, statutes, legal practice guides
and even entire course books on matters entitled “case analysis.” Unfortunately, many first-
year students hear it, believe it, and wanting to be eager and successful, follow the advice.
That is hog-wash! You not only do not need to do that, it will eat up your valuable time on
things which not only you do not need to know, but will get you off track and probably get you
confused. The key is to stay within the “4 Corners” of the Side Bar program. As such, and
because our teaching method is different, we provide you with all your course materials. This
is all you will need. Therefore, there is no reason for you to go to a book store and buy outside
study materials, whether that be course outlines, case briefs, flash cards or anything. They
cost money and you will not need them.
Now some of you may be thinking that a little extra knowledge is a good thing, so if I can have
the knowledge I get from law school and have some extra outside knowledge from these
“other“ study materials, I will be able to give even more comprehensive answers to the
questions on the State Bar exam.
Bad idea. First, these outside course materials will consume valuable time you will need for
the materials we provide. Second, you can easily get into information overload (a common
problem with new law students), which will not only paralyze you, but some materials could
give conflicting information which will cause confusion in your thought process. And lastly,
when you are answering a Bar Exam question, you shouldn’t interject information and
knowledge that you gained from outside sources (including legal sources) because it will not
only not give you extra points, but will probably cause a failing grade on that question because
the grader will assume that you did not read the specific call of the question. So, remember

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for taking the Bar exam (and answering law school essay exams too) stay within the 4 Corners
of the call of the question and within the 4 Corners of the information you get from Side Bar.
The key is for you to stay focused on the task at hand. Concerning learning about the different
codified laws or case law on subjects which you may or may not study in law school, you will
have plenty of time after you complete your degree requirements and pass the Bar to delve
into the wild, wooly and very expansive area known as the law. One thing at a time.
And with regards to picking up other books on subjects like Case Analysis or Trial Practice,
there will be little to nothing in them which will help you get through law school and pass your
exams. Plus, as mentioned, they are time eaters. Concerning case analysis itself, you will be
taught how to effectively do that for your purposes here.
In law school, you will be responsible mostly for knowing the English common law definitions
of the law. This will be just about all your first and second year. Later, in courses which did not
develop from the English common law (as with Community Property) or courses which are
driven by statutes like Wills & Trusts, Evidence, Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility or
the UCC, the codified statutes will be provided.
Although it is a combination of the two, for law school purposes, we will call these the “rules
of law.” It is only the rules of law which you are given here in which you need to learn,
understand, and remember. Anything else will be a distraction, and in some cases where the
outside material conflicts with our rule of law, it can mess with your thinking. So, stick with
the rules of law given within the course materials you are provided.
Now you will also be reading many cases. Unlike the practicing attorney who is reading these
cases to extract information which would support his/her arguments being proffered to a
court in, for example, motion papers, you will be reading cases for a different purpose. First,
you will be reading the cases to extract and learn the rules of law. The secondary purpose is to
hone your skills at issue spotting and analyzing.
The four most critical things you must learn in your first year of law school are learning the
required rules of law, learning how to focus on a specific call of a question, issue spotting
(which is part of reading comprehension) and analysis.
Some of you may have noticed that I left out of the critical things you must learn, is how to
come to a correct conclusion from your analysis. Unbelievably, that is an area which trips up

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many law students even after they graduate and take the Bar. They think that they must
provide the “only” correct conclusion or solution.
That is another mistake. The actual conclusion you come to (especially on the Bar exam) is for
the most part meaningless. Yes, you will usually be making a conclusion, but unless your fact
pattern only allows for a single conclusion, there usually is no right or wrong conclusion.
When it is not meaningless is when you believe that your analysis is flawless and only proffer
that analysis leading to that conclusion, while ignoring other possibilities (even if they seem
unlikely). If you do that, you will fail the essay exam. Your analysis always should proffer what
seems likely, but on the other hand you recognize this and that which could produce a
different outcome.
Demonstrating on paper that you can see both sides of the equation and analyze both sides.
This is the critical thing to learn and do as the law professors and Bar examiners look for that.
The only time a correct conclusion has importance is when sometimes the Bar will give you a
fact pattern which, for example, asks you to discuss damages in a tort fact pattern. You
analyze and discuss everything concerning the tort and it is clearly an action in negligence
(punitive damages do not apply to negligent actions), but the call of the question says discuss
damages. In this regard, you mention punitive damages and what they are in your discussion
and then conclude that punitive damages do not apply because you cannot obtain punitive
damages in negligence actions.
Here is another general rule to remember, and a very important one. *Pay Attention to
Details. * Of course, this is a cliché, but it is not one for you. You will need to pay close
attention to details for the remainder of your education, and moving forward in your legal
career.
I say this to you because when people enter law school, they are not told this either, they are
expected to figure it out, and by the time many figures it out, they have failed exams and
become frustrated. The details will be in key words, which will trigger you to search for things
and discuss them. You will understand shortly.
But, in contrast to details, as time goes on, recognize that you will also need to strike a
balance. Thus, you cannot lose the forest for the trees, meaning, yes get down into the trees
of the details, but always know and keep in mind what the big picture is. In business, in law

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and with most anything in life, this approach will serve you well. So, learn and live the
concept.
Now with that, let us start with how you will need to approach and analyze.
The best way to begin is with a rule of law… and a good example is the common law definition
of burglary which is as follows:
The breaking and entering of the dwelling house of another in the night time with the intent
of committing a felony therein.
That seems simply enough, right? But before we begin, I am sure you noticed that this
definition would not fit what you think by intuition would be burglary. And you would be
right. However, this is the rule of law for burglary you are given in law school and the one in
which the Bar Examiners expect you to know and to analyze.
OK, now although we have not gotten into how to break this definition down and analyze it
yet, I want you to write this definition down, and see what you come up with in terms of
separating this rule of law into separate elements (later the elements will be each separately
analyzed).
The easy way to accomplish this is by writing the definition down and drawing a line in each
spot in which you think is a separate element from the next and this way you can see how
many elements you come up with. Do not move on with the lesson below until you have done
this for yourself as you will get positive feedback from the exercise.
Before you move on, I should give you a little explanation first. You may be wondering why do
I have to break this down at all? What is the purpose?
Well the answer is the breaking down of the rule of law is critical for you in law school and
when and if you practice law, because every rule of law has elements and each and every
element must be present for you to have an action which meets the definition of a rule of law.
Therefore, each element is broken down and separately analyzed, because if any single
element of the rule is not present, you do not have a crime or a tort or a breach of contract
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Thus, your ability to break down the rule into its elements is critical, but most importantly
your analysis of each element then becomes the pivotal point for everything.
So, at this point, break down the elements as you would think of them right now. Write them
down and then move on to the next page.
Now let’s look at the elements so you can compare what you did.
The breaking/ and entering/ of the dwelling house/ of another/ in the night time/ with the
intent of committing a felony therein.
There are six elements. If you came up with five elements with “of the dwelling house of
another” as a single element, that is good too.
The breaking down of it into elements is just the start, and the definition itself is a “rule of
law.” However, there are “rules of law” within the basic definition rule.
When you are reading cases over the coming months, you will be extracting the rules of law
from them. The rules of law are not just the entire definition, but the definition of each of the
elements. Then, once you have the definition of each of the elements, then you are equipped
with being able to analyze the entire rule (in this case burglary) within a fact pattern.
So, let’s start looking at each of the individual elements and their basic definitions. After that,
we will take a scenario, or fact pattern, and then analyze whether a burglary occurred.
For our purposes here, I will simply give you the “rules of law” of each of the elements, which
are as follows:
Breaking: A breaking can be either actual, such as by forcing open a door, or constructive,
such as by fraud or threats. A breaking does not require that anything be "broken" in terms of
physical damage occurring. A person who has permission to enter part of a house, but not
another part, commits a breaking and entering when they use any means to enter a room
where they are not permitted, so long as the room was not open to enter.

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Entering: An entering can involve either physical entry by a person or the insertion of an
instrument with which to remove property. Insertion of a tool to gain entry may not constitute
entering by itself. The use of the pry bar would not constitute an entry even if a portion of
the prybar "entered" the residence. Under the instrumentality rule the use of an instrument
to affect a breaking would not constitute an entry. However, if any part of the perpetrator's
body entered the residence in an attempt to gain entry, the instrumentality rule did not apply.
Thus, if the perpetrator uses the prybar to pry open the window and then used his hands to
lift the partially opened window, an "entry" would have taken place when he grasped the
bottom of the window with his hands.
Dwelling House: A house includes a temporarily unoccupied dwelling, but not a building
used only occasionally as a habitation.
Night Time: Night time is defined as hours between half an hour after sunset and half an
hour before sunrise.
Commit a Felony: Typically, this element is expressed as the intent to commit a felony
“therein”. The use of the word “therein” adds nothing and certainly does not limit the scope
of burglary to those wrongdoers who break and enter a dwelling intending to commit a felony
on the premises. The situs of the felony does not matter, and burglary occurs if the
wrongdoer intended to commit a felony at the time he broke and entered. At common law, a
felony was simply defined as a serious crime.
OK, now that we have the definition or the rule of law for burglary and each of the rules of law
for the elements, let’s look at three different scenarios.
After reading the scenario, I want you to write down, using the elements above, your analysis
of the scenario and your conclusion based upon your analysis.
At this point, I understand you have not seen how to structure the analysis, I just want you to
do the first one without being given structure to see how your thinking lines up with the
structure I will give you afterward. If your structure is similar, it will reinforce your analysis. If
your structure is dis-similar, you will remember how to do it afterward. So, read and the
analyze the First Scenario. Then compare what you wrote with the analysis provided below.
After the first scenario, you will be given two other scenarios. Analyze each of those using the
structure you were provided in the first and then proceed to our analysis to see how well you
are starting to issue spot and analyze. Let’s begin.

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First Scenario
Alfred, with the intent to steal Barbara's new mink coat, travels to the house where Barbara
lives and enters through a side window after breaking it. Unfortunately, Barbara had decided
to wear her mink coat to the ball that evening. After Alfred saw that the mink coat was not
there he remembered that Barbara said something about going out that evening. Alfred
decided to wait until Barbara returned home so he could then overpower her and take the
coat from her. Alfred went to the kitchen, prepared a sandwich, ate it, played cards, and
awaited Barbara's return. By 11:30 p.m. Alfred, tired of waiting for Barbara, decided to leave.
He left through the open broken window.
Analyze whether a burglary occurred.
Write your analysis down.
Analysis of First Scenario:
A burglary is the breaking and entering of the dwelling house of another in the night time with
the intent of committing a felony therein.
Breaking & Entering:
Here the fact pattern plainly says that Alfred entered the house through the side window after
breaking the window. This element has been met.
Dwelling House:
The facts state that this is a house where Barbara lives. Thus, it is a dwelling house. However,
the facts also state that after Alfred entered the house he didn’t see the mink and that he

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remembered Barbara telling him that she was going out that evening (insinuating being
familiar with Barbara). This presents a problem because Alfred could share the house with
Barbara. Thus, the house would not be the dwelling house of another. Also, if not a
housemate, Alfred could be a friend and would have permission to be in the house and
therefore a breaking couldn’t have occurred. On the other hand, the facts are silent on these
two issues, and coupled with that the facts stated that Alfred had to break a window to gain
access. It is more than likely that Alfred did not have permission to be there and it was not his
house. Thus, this element is most likely met.
Nighttime:
We do not know from the fact pattern whether the breaking and entering occurred at
nighttime. We are told that Alfred remained in the house for a while and then left at 11:30PM.
Thus, it is more than likely that he waited a couple of hours before he left. If that is the case,
he would have entered at 9:30PM. If that is the case, it is more than likely that the breaking
occurred at nighttime, but we cannot be certain without more facts.
Intent to Commit a Felony:
Now the facts clearly state that Alfred went to Barbara’s house with the intent to steal the
mink coat. But the facts also state that the coat wasn’t there and he left empty handed.
Because he did not steal the coat does not matter, when he entered the house, he had the
intent to steal it and thus this element is met.
Conclusion:
If Alfred did not have permission to enter Barbara’s house, and he did not also live there with
Barbara, and if it was nighttime (dark) when Alfred broke into the house, then all the elements
of burglary were met.
So how did you do with this first time try? A little different? Let’s move on to the next two
scenarios. Analyze both, and then compare your break down with what we have provided.
When you compare, note the differences. The key is for you to learn to see where potential
issues are hidden, spot them, and discuss them.

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Second Scenario
At 8:00PM, John was walking down Main Street of this small town when he peered through
the picture window of the jewelry shop and saw a diamond ring. John thought to himself, I
want that ring, so he went around to the back of the building where he found a window. He
broke the window, entered the shop. Nobody was around, so John snatched up the diamond
ring and exited through an open door.
Analyze whether a burglary occurred.
Write your analysis down.
Third Scenario
During the Summer, in the Northern Hemisphere, Paul had been watching Diane and Steve’s
house for a week. Because Steve and Diane drove fancy cars, Paul figured that there would be
some valuable goods in the house and he wanted those goods for himself. Then one evening
at around 9:30PM, Paul watched Steve and Diane leave the house. Paul waited for more than
a half an hour to make sure they would not return. When he was sure they wouldn’t return,
he approached the house and saw a partially open window. Paul, being ready to break into
the house had a pry bar and started to pry the window open, when he noticed a door on the
other side of the house was open. Instead of chancing making noise of prying the window,
Paul entered the house through the open door. Once inside he found a bunch of jewelry and
$5,000 in cash. Paul took the jewelry and the cash and left the house with the goods before
Steve and Diane got back home.
Analyze whether a burglary occurred. Write your analysis down.
Analysis of Second Scenario:
Breaking & Entering:

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This fact pattern is clear that John went around to the back of the building, found a window,
broke the window, and entered the shop. So, at first glance, you would think this element is
clearly met. However, the fact pattern does not say that John entered the shop through the
window. The fact pattern is silent on this issue. The facts attempt to make you think that is
what happened. Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t. We know there was an open door in
which he exited from, so maybe he ended up entering through that same door after breaking
the window? You do not know. So, the analysis would be that the fact patterns seems to
indicate that this element is fulfilled, however it is not conclusive and we are not sure whether
a breaking and entering happened.
Dwelling House:
Concerning a dwelling house, this element is clearly not fulfilled because the fact pattern
states that this was a jewelry shop and that he entered the shop. But the facts also say the
shop was on the Main Street of this small town. Often, in small towns, shop keepers have
their dwelling house in the same building as their shop. The fact pattern says nothing of this,
and the facts say nothing about John entering any other rooms other than the shop. But
mentioning this, is a good issue spot, you need to identify it, briefly discuss it and in this case,
you can conclude that because the facts do not indicate anything about a dwelling house
within the shop, it is most likely not there.
Nighttime:
Here the fact pattern says that John entered the shop at 8:00PM. The question you need to
pose is this the nighttime under the definition you were given which is, “the hours between
half an hour after sunset and half an hour before sunrise.” The fact pattern does not say
whether this happened in July or December or whether it happened in the Northern
Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere. In July in the Northern Hemisphere 8:00 PM would
not be nighttime, nor would December in the Southern Hemisphere. These issues must be
pointed out and again, the facts do not allow you to make a definitive conclusion, so all you
can say is that “if” this occurred in December in the Northern Hemisphere, the nighttime
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This is the only element that the fact pattern leaves no doubt. John saw the diamond ring and
decided he was going to steal it (because he did take it does not matter), it was the intent to
commit a felony which was fulfilled.
Conclusion:
Although the element of intent was clearly shown within the fact pattern, it is unclear from
the facts given whether this happened at nighttime and within the dwelling house of another.
Therefore, based upon these facts, it is more than probable that a burglary did not occur.
A small side note concerning the Second Scenario: Did you notice that although the fact
pattern was very short, there came out of it many issues to bring up? With the law exams and
Bar Examiners, there is no correlation between numbers of issues and the length of a fact
pattern. Short fact patterns can have many issues and vice versa. The point is do not make
assumptions. Stick to the program of reading the facts and identifying all the issues you can
and discussing them. This is not a course in statistics and patterns, but a course in identifying
issues and analyzing them.
Analysis of Third Scenario:
Breaking& Entering:
The facts tell us that Paul saw a partially opened window to enter the house and began to pry
it open with his pry bar, but before any part of his body entered the house through the
window, he noticed an open door and he entered the house through the open door. There
must be a breaking and an entering for common law burglary. Breaking without entry or entry
without breaking is not sufficient for common law burglary. Although it is rarely stated this
way as an element, the common law required that entry occur as a consequence of the
breaking. Here the entry occurred because of the open door and not from prying the window
open. Thus, Paul did not gain entry via a breaking and therefore this element was not met.
This kind of fact pattern is one the Bar Examiners enjoy placing in MBE and essay questions
because the students will usually be lead down the path of that Paul performed the breaking

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at the window, and entered through the door, so therefore a breaking and entering occurred.
Don’t get caught.
Dwelling House of another:
There does not seem to be an issue as to whether this is a dwelling house or whether it is a
dwelling house of another because the facts state this was Steve and Diane’s house and it was
conclusive from the facts presented that Paul was neither an invitee, friend, or shared living
quarters in the house. Thus, this element has been fulfilled.
Nighttime:
Here the facts tell us that this occurred in the Northern Hemisphere in the Summer time and
that after watching Steve and Diane leave at 9:30PM, Paul then began to enter the house
more than a half an hour later. In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere during the Summer
10:00 to 10:15PM would be a half an hour after sunset to qualify for being within the
definition of “nighttime.” However, there are many other places within the Northern
Hemisphere during the Summer in which even 11:00PM it is still partially light (e.g. Alaska,
Iceland, Norway, Finland etc.). The facts do not tell us where in the Northern Hemisphere this
situation occurred. Thus, we cannot know for certain whether this occurred during the
nighttime. Because a majority of the land masses would be in the dark at the time, it is
probable this happened during the nighttime. But, it remains a question.
Here the facts are also conclusive in that Paul watched the house and intended to break into
the house to steal expensive goods. Therefore, he had the intent to commit a felony and this
element is fulfilled.
Conclusion:
Despite the issues surrounding the analysis of whether this happened at night, Paul’s entry
was not a consequence of a breaking and therefore a burglary did not occur.

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I am guessing, you did not see a few of these issues coming at you (Iceland, really?). But, few
of anyone else first attempting to analyze these types of fact patterns did either (and it has
little to do with your IQ, but more with training). It is a way of reading and recognizing things.
Also, did you notice that even if an element is clearly met within the fact pattern, it is still
listed in the analysis and briefly discussed. Law professors and the Bar Examiners are looking
for this too. So, do not skip an element in your analysis just because it was clearly met in the
fact pattern you are given.
I hope you recognized another thing… the way you were lead toward the deeper issue spotting
and analysis as each scenario was given. Meaning, if you look at the first scenario, for example
you could have gotten into a deep analysis of the Northern Hemisphere, versus the Southern
and then the Winter versus Summer and then the exact location. Yes, that analysis could have
been done, but first you needed to see how we get you to the deepest part of the analysis
before just dropping you in.
Also, as time goes on, you will learn that you will be given essay questions of two types which
are what is termed as “race horse” and the other are deep analysis. The race horse questions
look to see that you identify as many issues as possible, and you will not have the time to do
deep analysis. The other questions will probe you to see how deep you can go with your
analysis. The nighttime analysis in these scenarios highlight this for you.
Memory Techniques
A friend of mine once asked me who was the 20th President of the United States? I thought
for a moment and figured it was probably one of those obscure ones that no one remembers.
So, I said that I didn’t know. So, he said, OK, how about the 18th President, can you name him?
Again, I thought about it and couldn’t come up with a name.
Then he says, I am going to tell you a little story that has some associations in it and afterward,
you will not only know the names of these two Presidents, but you will never forget them. He
was right, I never forgot them and that was 25 years ago.
My friend asked me, you know the more modern presidents, don’t you? Of course, I said. So,
then he asked, well then you know that President Reagan was our 40th President. I said yes,

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that is common knowledge. Then he said, it is also common knowledge that President Reagan
was an actor before becoming president. I nodded. As a result, he said, half of 40 is 20 and
the 20th President’s name is also the name of an actor…. Garfield.
So, then my friend said, think of modern presidents again. Which modern president was killed
by being shot? Of course, the answer was President Kennedy. So, who succeeded President
Kennedy? And that was also common knowledge, which was President Johnson.
He then asked, besides Kennedy, who is the most famous president you know who was killed
by being shot. Well, I said, that is easy, President Lincoln. Then he asked, the famous
President Lincoln, what numbered president was he? So, I said, well I know that, but not
everyone would, but he was our 17th president. My friend said that both President Kennedy
and President Lincoln were succeeded by a President Johnson after being shot. So, the 18th
president was Johnson. He said, there is a faster way of getting to that, which is if you
remember the modern President Johnson being the 36th president and half of 36 is 18, you get
the other President Johnson.
That is a memory technique which incorporates associations and visualization. They are both
powerful ways of remembering a lot of obscure information (something you will have to do in
law school).
With basic word associations, you link in a logical fashion something you know, with
something you do not know. That is what we did with the presidents above. For your
memorizing the tons of information from law school, the technique of word associations will
be used occasionally to remember some obscure and odd facts here and there. It will be your
secondary memory tool, as it is too cumbersome to employ for the vast amount of other
material you must remember. For the other material, we will engage in visualization.
But, word association is important when you want to remember, for example, Federal Rules of
Evidence 800 et.seq, the Hearsay Rule, with its exceptions. This would be connecting a
number and a rule (in these examples, there usually is no story to visualize, so word
association is the best way to handle these situations). For your first year of law school, you
will not have much need for word associations with numbers (except with some of the UCC
rules in contracts) as that will come more in the later courses. But since we are dealing with
the subject of memory techniques, let us go over the basics here.
With number associations, what you want to do is have a mental picture of something that
represents a number. So, with the Federal Rules of Evidence example above that is 800, or

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shortened to the number 8. What picture would cause you to think of the number 8? Well if
you have done any ice skating in your life, doing figure 8’s comes to mind. Or maybe you like
to play poker, and then you would know that a pair of 8’s is called snowmen. So, from that
point to remember that the Hearsay rule comes under the 800 series, all you would have to do
is picture in your mind snowmen with a big ear listening. Once you have that association,
when you are writing an essay, it will come to you automatically that the Hearsay Rule is in the
800 series.
Here are some common picture associations for numbers. For the number 1, picture a tree
truck as it looks like the number 1. For number 2, you can picture anything that would have
two positions, for example a light switch has an on and an off position. Number three, picture
a stool which has three legs. Number 4, you could see a car with 4 wheels. Number 5 could
be a glove or a hand with 5 fingers. Number 6 could be a six-shooter hand gun. Number 7,
how about a slot machine showing you a jackpot because you hit triple sevens. Number 8 we
went over before. Number 9, could be a cat because a cat has nine lives and there is cat food
by that name. Number 10, well that could be a bowling alley that has ten pins at the end of it.
Number 11, getting back to the sports theme, might be a goal post, and number 12 you could
picture a dozen eggs.
Once you have the picture which is your number, then what ever fact you are trying to
remember associated with that number, visualize a picture which would represent it. Believe
me, when you must start to remember different rules which are associated with numbers, this
technique will come in very handy. So, save this material, it will help you later.
For now, the most important technique you will use is visualization. Here again the concept is
easy, you just must apply it. Ever wonder why most people when they go to a party for
example, and meet a whole lot of new people, that they have a hard time remembering these
people’s names, but they will remember what they did and said during the party.
That is the difference of visualization and rote memory. Remembering people’s names (unless
you actively use association memory techniques) are quickly forgotten because you are not
engaged, and you must remember the name by rote. But as you float through the people at
the party, you are experiencing things and these experiences are automatically recorded in
your mind’s eye and transferred to memory, without you even trying. So, you remember
them.
Another example might be you went on a river rafting trip with a friend. You arrived and was
introduced to your raft mates and for the next two days had a lot of fun with these people

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shooting the rapids of the South Fork of the American River in California. After the trip, you go
on with your life and several years later someone asks you about river rafting. Despite all the
years, you can recall immediately everything you saw and did during the trip, including the
instantaneous snapshots in your mind of the various rapids. But despite being exposed to
your raft mate’s names for 2 days, you probably can’t remember a single name. You
remember the other things because you lived the experience, and when you live an
experience (even if you are virtually living it in your mind while reading a book), your mind
automatically records the information and stores it in your memory.
So, since this is automatic, why not use it in law school. You can and it works and it is a real
time saver, while providing a method of easy recall of the massive amounts of information you
will have to take in.
How we do that is that you live a virtual experience. In law school, you will be reading
hundreds of cases. Within each case in generally a single rule of law which you will have to
learn and remember for analysis application later (just like with the Burglary, Larceny, and
Arson examples above).
Most times, law students will brief their cases, commit their briefs to a law outline or summary
and then attempt to memorize the outline (rote memory again). That is time consuming, and
unless you are bestowed with a photographic memory, usually leaves gaps in your memory or
slows down recall.
In our method, you will have a course outline and there will be some repetitive rote
memorization, but that will be at the tail end, after you have gone through your visualization
experience. With this technique, you will be able to process and remember much more
material in less time than the old fashion method.
This is how it is done. As mentioned you will be reading these cases to extract each rule of
law, but each case is a story, and adventure. Something like a short novel. As with novels, the
ones you remember the easiest are those that you virtually place yourself into the story. You
are right there (in your mind’s eye of course) when the action is happening. When you read
something, and place yourself in the action, your brain automatically records what happened.
So, there is nothing to remember. It is already there. Then the key will be for you to pick out a
particular action or scene that you saw in the story and use it as a “peg” or as the trip device
to remember the story and then associate it with the rule of law within the story.

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The easy way to understand this is to just do one. Below is the famous case of Palsgralf v. Long
Island Railroad. This case has been taught in every law school in the United States for decades
and you will see it again within your Torts course. It comes out of the negligence portion of
tort law and the rule of law in it will be tested on law school and Bar exams consistently.
For now, just read the case (the story), place yourself in the scene like you were watching the
whole thing unfold as if you were on the train platform yourself. Do not concern yourself with
citations to authority (they are distracters), and in fact throughout law school skip over
references and citations to authority and dissenting opinions, they are all distracters and waste
your time. Also skip over any Latin terms you may encounter in cases. You do not need to
know what Latin terms mean for any exam (including the Bar) and they are no longer used
(actually discouraged) in the real world of regular practice. So why stop and look the Latin
terms up in a Law Dictionary? These not only waste your time, but more importantly, they
remove you from being in the story itself which is the most important aspect of reading the
case concerning memory techniques.
After you read this story, we’ll come out on the other side, discuss the case, what the rule of
law is to be taken from it, and how to form your peg or picture to associate this with the rule
of law so that you will have instant recall. Remember, do not get bogged down in the legal
mumbo jumbo. Read the case like a story and place yourself in the story. You may want to
make yourself one of the actors in the story, or just someone who was there at the time
watching what was happening.
Palsgraf v Long Island R.R. Co. (1928) 248 NY 339
Plaintiff was standing on a platform of defendant's railroad after buying a ticket to go to

Rockaway Beach. A train stopped at the station, bound for another place. Two men ran
forward to catch it. One of the men reached the platform of the car without mishap, though
the train was already moving. The other man, carrying a package, jumped aboard the car, but
seemed unsteady as if about to fall. A guard on the car, who had held the door open, reached
forward to help him in, and another guard on the platform pushed him from behind. In this
act, the package was dislodged, and fell upon the rails. It was a package of small size, about
fifteen inches long, and was covered by a newspaper. In fact, it contained fireworks, but there
was nothing in its appearance to give notice of its contents. The fireworks when they fell,
exploded. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at the other end of the
platform, many feet away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing injuries for which she sues.

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The conduct of the defendant's guard, if a wrong in its relation to the holder of the package,
was not a wrong in its relation to the plaintiff, standing far away. Relatively to her it was not
negligence at all. Nothing in the situation gave notice that the falling package had in it the
potency of peril to persons thus removed. Negligence is not actionable unless it involves the
invasion of a legally protected interest, the violation of a right. "Proof of negligence in the air,
so to speak, will not do" (Pollock, Torts [11th ed.], p. 455; Martin v. Herzog, 228 N. Y. 164, 170;
cf. Salmond, Torts [6th ed.], p. 24).
"Negligence is the absence of care, according to the circumstances" (WILLES, J., in Vaughan v.
Taff Vale Ry. Co., 5 H. & N. 679, 688; 1 Beven, Negligence [4th ed.], 7; Paul v. Consol. Fireworks
Co., 212 N. Y. 117; Adams v. Bullock, 227 N. Y. 208, 211; Parrott v. Wells-Fargo Co., 15 Wall. [U.
S.] 524). The plaintiff as she stood upon the platform of the station might claim to be
protected against intentional invasion of her bodily security. Such invasion is not charged. She
might claim to be protected against unintentional invasion by conduct involving in the thought
of reasonable men an unreasonable hazard that such invasion would ensue.
These, from the point of view of the law, were the bounds of her immunity, with perhaps
some rare exceptions, survivals for the most part of ancient forms of liability, where conduct is
held to be at the peril of the actor (Sullivan v. Dunham, 161 N. Y. 290). If no hazard was
apparent to the eye of ordinary vigilance, an act innocent and harmless, at least to outward
seeming, with reference to her, did not take to itself the quality of a tort because it happened
to be a wrong, though apparently not one involving the risk of bodily insecurity, with reference
to someone else.
"In every instance, before negligence can be predicated of a given act, back of the act must be
sought and found a duty to the individual complaining, the observance of which would have
averted or avoided the injury" (McSHERRY, C. J., in W. Va. Central R. Co. v. State, 96 Md. 652,
666; cf. Norfolk & Western Ry. Co. v. Wood, 99 Va. 156, 158, 159; Hughes v. Boston & Maine R.
R. Co., 71 N. H. 279, 284; U. S. Express Co. v. Everest, 72 Kan. 517; Emry v. Roanoke Nav. Co.,
111 N. C. 94, 95; Vaughan v. Transit Dev. Co., 222 N. Y. 79; Losee v. Clute, 51 N. Y. 494; DiCaprio
v. N. Y. C. R. R. Co., 231 N. Y. 94; 1 Shearman & Redfield on Negligence, § 8, and cases cited;
Cooley on Torts [3d ed.], p. 1411; Jaggard on Torts, vol. 2, p. 826; Wharton, Negligence, § 24;
Bohlen, Studies in the Law of Torts, p. 601). "The ideas of negligence and duty are strictly
correlative" (BOWEN, L. J., in Thomas v. Quartermaine, 18 Q. B. D. 685, 694). The plaintiff sues
in her own right for a wrong personal to her, and not as the vicarious beneficiary of a breach of
duty to another.

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A different conclusion will involve us, and swiftly too, in a maze of contradictions. A guard
stumbles over a package which has been left upon a platform. It seems to be a bundle of
newspapers. It turns out to be a can of dynamite. To the eye of ordinary vigilance, the bundle
is abandoned waste, which may be kicked or trod on with impunity. Is a passenger at the
other end of the platform protected by the law against the unsuspected hazard concealed
beneath the waste? If not, is the result to be any different, as far as the distant passenger is
concerned, when the guard stumbles over a valise which a truckman or a porter has left upon
the walk? The passenger far away, if the victim of a wrong at all, has a cause of action, not
derivative, but original and primary. His claim to be protected against invasion of his bodily
security is neither greater nor less because the act resulting in the invasion is a wrong to
another far removed. In this case, the rights that are said to have been violated, the interests
said to have been invaded, are not even of the same order. The man was not injured in his
person nor even put in danger. The purpose of the act, as well as its effect, was to make his
person safe. If there was a wrong to him at all, which may very well be doubted, it was a
wrong to a property interest only, the safety of his package.
Out of this wrong to property, which threatened injury to nothing else, there has passed, we
are told, to the plaintiff by derivation or succession a right of action for the invasion of an
interest of another order, the right to bodily security. The diversity of interests emphasizes the
futility of the effort to build the plaintiff's right upon the basis of a wrong to someone else.
The gain is one of emphasis, for a like result would follow if the interests were the same. Even
then, the orbit of the danger as disclosed to the eye of reasonable vigilance would be the orbit
of the duty. One who jostles one's neighbor in a crowd does not invade the rights of others
standing at the outer fringe when the unintended contact casts a bomb upon the ground. The
wrongdoer as to them is the man who carries the bomb, not the one who explodes it without
suspicion of the danger. Life will have to be made over, and human nature transformed,
before prevision so extravagant can be accepted as the norm of conduct, the customary
standard to which behavior must conform.
The argument for the plaintiff is built upon the shifting meanings of such words as "wrong"
and "wrongful," and shares their instability. What the plaintiff must show is "a wrong" to
herself, i. e., a violation of her own right, and not merely a wrong to someone else, nor
conduct "wrongful" because unsocial, but not "a wrong" to anyone. We are told that one who
drives at reckless speed through a crowded city street is guilty of a negligent act and,
therefore, of a wrongful one irrespective of the consequences. Negligent the act is, and
wrongful in the sense that it is unsocial, but wrongful and unsocial in relation to other
travelers, only because the eye of vigilance perceives the risk of damage.
If the same act were to be committed on a speedway or a race course, it would lose its
wrongful quality. The risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed, and risk

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imports relation; it is risk to another or to others within the range of apprehension (Seavey,
Negligence, Subjective or Objective, 41 H. L. Rv. 6; Boronkay v. Robinson & Carpenter, 247 N. Y.
365). This does not mean, of course, that one who launches a destructive force is always
relieved of liability if the force, though known to be destructive, pursues an unexpected path.
"It was not necessary that the defendant should have had notice of the particular method in
which an accident would occur, if the possibility of an accident was clear to the ordinarily
prudent eye" (Munsey v. Webb, 231 U. S. 150, 156; Condran v. Park & Tilford, 213 N. Y. 341,
345; Robert v. U. S. E. F. Corp., 240 N. Y. 474, 477).
Some acts, such as shooting, are so imminently dangerous to anyone who may come within
reach of the missile, however unexpectedly, as to impose a duty of prevision not far from that
of an insurer. Even today, and much oftener in earlier stages of the law, one acts sometimes at
one's peril (Jeremiah Smith, Tort, and Absolute Liability, 30 H. L. Rv. 328; Street, Foundations of
Legal Liability, vol. 1, pp. 77, 78). Under this head, it may be, fall certain cases of what is
known as transferred intent, an act willfully dangerous to A resulting by misadventure in injury
to B (Talmage v. Smith, 101 Mich. 370, 374)
These cases aside, wrong is defined in terms of the natural or probable, at least when
unintentional (Parrot v. Wells-Fargo Co. [The Nitro-Glycerine Case], 15 Wall. [U. S.] 524). The
range of reasonable apprehension is at times a question for the court, and at times, if varying
inferences are possible, a question for the jury. Here, by concession, there was nothing in the
situation to suggest to the most cautious mind that the parcel wrapped in newspaper would
spread wreckage through the station. If the guard had thrown it down knowingly and willfully,
he would not have threatened the plaintiff's safety, as far as appearances could warn him. His
conduct would not have involved, even then, an unreasonable probability of invasion of her
bodily security. Liability can be no greater where the act is inadvertent.
Negligence, like risk, is thus a term of relation. Negligence in the abstract, apart from things
related, is surely not a tort, if indeed it is understandable at all. Negligence is not a tort unless
it results in the commission of a wrong, and the commission of a wrong imports the violation
of a right, in this case, we are told, the right to be protected against interference with one's
bodily security.
But bodily security is protected, not against all forms of interference or aggression, but only
against some. One who seeks redress at law does not make out a cause of action by showing
without more that there has been damage to his person. If the harm was not willful, he must
show that the act as to him had possibilities of danger so many and apparent as to entitle him
to be protected against the doing of it though the harm was unintended. Affront to personality

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is still the keynote of the wrong. Confirmation of this view will be found in the history and
development of the action on the case.
Negligence as a basis of civil liability was unknown to mediaeval law (8 Holdsworth, History of
English Law, p. 449; Street, Foundations of Legal Liability, vol. 1, pp. 189, 190). For damage to
the person, the sole remedy was trespass, and trespass did not lie in the absence of
aggression, and that direct and personal (Holdsworth, op. cit. p. 453; Street, op. cit. vol. 3, pp.
258, 260, vol. 1, pp. 71, 74.) Liability for other damage, as where a servant without orders
from the master does or omits something to the damage of another, is a plant of later growth
(Holdsworth, op. cit. 450, 457; Wigmore, Responsibility for Tortious Acts, vol. 3, Essays in
Anglo-American Legal History, 520, 523, 526, 533). When it emerged out of the legal soil, it
was thought of as a variant of trespass, an offshoot of the parent stock. This appears in the
form of action, which was known as trespass on the case (Holdsworth, op. cit. p. 449; cf. Scott
v. Shepard, 2 Wm. Black. 892; Green, Rationale of Proximate Cause, p. 19). The victim does
not sue derivatively, or by right of subrogation, to vindicate an interest invaded in the person
of another. Thus, to view his cause of action is to ignore the fundamental difference between
tort and crime (Holland, Jurisprudence, p. 328). He sues for breach of a duty owing to himself.
The law of causation, remote or proximate, is thus foreign to the case before us. The question
of liability is always anterior to the question of the measure of the consequences that go with
liability. If there is no tort to be redressed, there is no occasion to consider what damage
might be recovered if there were a finding of a tort. We may assume, without deciding, that
negligence, not at large or in the abstract, but in relation to the plaintiff, would entail liability
for any and all consequences, however novel or extraordinary (Bird v. St. Paul F. & M. Ins. Co.,
224 N. Y. 47, 54; Ehrgott v. Mayor, etc., of N. Y., 96 N. Y. 264; Smith v. London & S. W. Ry. Co., L.
R. 6 C. P. 14; 1 Beven, Negligence, 106; Street, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 90; Green, Rationale of
Proximate Cause, pp. 88, 118; cf. Matter of Polemis, L. R. 1921, 3 K. B. 560; 44 Law Quarterly
Review, 142).
There is room for argument that a distinction is to be drawn according to the diversity of
interests invaded by the act, as where conduct negligent in that it threatens an insignificant
invasion of an interest in property results in an unforeseeable invasion of an interest of
another order, as, e. g., one of bodily security. Perhaps other distinctions may be necessary.
We do not go into the question now. The consequences to be followed must first be rooted in
a wrong. The judgment of the Appellate Division and that of the Trial Term should be
reversed, and the complaint dismissed, with costs in all courts.

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OK, you have now read your first case. Hopefully you put yourself within the story and you
were on the train platform watching as the passenger on the platform was running to catch
the train while carrying the bag full of fireworks when the Long Island Rail Road employees
tried to help the passenger aboard the train, the bag of fireworks fell on the tracks, blew-up
and allegedly caused weight scales on the platform to fall injuring other people.
Then you went on to read a ton of other stuff which was simply the court analysis to formulate
what the rule of law is you need to learn from this case.
Unbelievably all those paragraphs of mumbo jumbo can be boiled down into a single word
rule of law. That is “foreseeability.” , under the tort of negligence, the test is if a reasonable
person could foresee an occurrence (which could cause damages to another) and the actor
responsible did not do anything to try and prevent it, they should be held responsible.
Put another way, if something happens in which a reasonable person would not expect it to
happen, then the actor cannot be held responsible because he could not anticipate or foresee
the consequence. In this case, despite that it was the railroad employees helping the
passenger on the train, and that act may have caused the package to fall, a reasonable person
could not foresee that someone was carrying fireworks in the bag and that the bag would
explode.
With regards to the actual holding of the case, this does not have as much importance as you
might think. The holding just says that in this case the actor (the LIRR) couldn’t reasonably
foresee the consequences, so they could not be held liable. The heart of the case, which is
what you need to take away, is the rule of law of the case. Then, with whatever fact pattern
you are given you can argue both sides of the foreseeability issue. In fact, this was the second
time the case was appealed, the first time it went in favor of the plaintiff. And even after this
holding, there was a dissent. So, the holdings of these cases, as with your ultimate
conclusions when writing exam essays are of much less importance than spotting the issues
and arguing the facts on both sides.
Now, you lived through the drama, how do you peg or connect the rule of law to the story.
Well a suggestion would be to place on the wall of the train station a picture of the “all seeing
eye” as it appears on the dollar bill as representing foreseeability. With that you will never
forget the case or the rule of law.

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One last note concerning this case, as it relates to distracters. As mentioned above citations to
authority and dissenting opinions (which there was one in this case, but I did not include it)
are distracters. You do not need to read them, study them, or know them. They will eat your
time and possibly cause you to lose focus as to the simplicity of the rule of law that you
actually have now learned.
There is another distracter. Toward the beginning of this course, I told you about outside
reading materials (often encouraged by law schools to read) and I said those are more
distracters and time wasters. This case brings up a perfect example. The main outside
readings law schools encourage you to read are what are called “hornbooks.” Prosser &
Keeton on Torts is one of the most famous. The Palsgraf case is written about extensively.
However, when you read this analysis, the scholars will go all over the place.
For example, a discussion will ensue about how could exploding fireworks cause heavy scales
on the other side of the platform to fall? That discussion is getting into another and different
area of tort law concerning “causation” or what is the proximate cause of the happening. This
is a tangent and is not the lesson or rule of law to be learned from this case. The only thing
you need to know from this case is the rule of law concerning foreseeability. So, if you are
reading outside material on this case for causation, you could easily get the two confused and
in an essay exam, if you were to mention Palsgraf as the premise for causation and not
foreseeability, you will lose major points. So, stay focused, streamlined and as simple as
possible.
Although this section deals with memory techniques, I cannot emphasize enough that when it
comes to interpreting (or analyzing the law or the law in relations to facts given), there is
rarely a right or wrong, black, and white answer. This is what the Bar Examiners will be
focused on for your exams. Of course, when the rare situation pops up which is clearly right or
wrong, the Bar will want to see you recognize it and address it as that, but then they want you
to move on to the other issues.
For the memory peg or connector, I think simply seeing a yellow cab connected with
reasonable care and you will remember that case and the rule of law it represents.
That should give you a solid foundation as to how to read and absorb and remember the cases
and the rules of law. If you put yourself into the story, your mind automatically records it, so
you might as well learn to remember all this material in auto-pilot versus trying to drum it into
your head via rote memorization from the beginning.

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Use these memory methods in the system laid out below, and when exam time comes, you
will not have to pull “all-nighters” to cram the information via rote memorization. Live within
the visualizations of the cases, your mind will record the information and when you sleep, your
mind will automatically store that information for you. And if you have included your pegs or
connectors, these will automatically trigger the memory and you will retrieve the rule of law.
Novel idea…. Sleep and remember.
Case Briefing
In law school, you are asked to read and brief legal cases. The cases are opinions which come
from appeals courts and state and the U.S, Supreme courts. There is nothing mystical about
briefing cases. The technique simply permits lawyers and law students to get a thumbnail
sketch of a sometimes long appellate opinion. For law students, it also provides the vehicle by
which a rule of law is extracted which the student needs to know, understand and commit to
memory. The brief should tell you quickly and accurately what you need to remember about
the case.
In private practice, the busy partner may ask an associate to brief several cases. A judge may
ask her law clerk to brief cases relating to an upcoming motion. And in law school you are
asked to brief cases, not just to extract a rule of law, but also to teach you an approach to legal
analysis that will become second nature to you. It will also teach you a skill that you will use
throughout your career.
The simple truth is that learning the law involves learning how to attack legal questions. When
you brief a case, you develop the analytical skill you need as a lawyer. A brief should be used
contextually. The brief for your senior partner is prepared with an eye toward its ultimate use
in a legal argument. The brief is a shorthand statement of what the case means in a particular
setting, rather than an objective statement of facts and law.
In the briefing process, the thing to remember is that the operative word is “brief.” Many first-
year law students end up writing briefs that are longer than the cases themselves. They feel a
compulsion to cover everything, as being new to this they have an inability to extract the
essence of the case. When briefing cases, to get at the lesson or rule of law in the case, you
will need to learn how to distinguish what is important and what is not. This is complicated
and confusing at first because it would seem to you that everything in the legal analysis must
be important.

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First, for law school purposes, there is no one set way to prepare a brief, this is because it is a
tool for you to use. If it accomplishes that objective, it is a good brief. However, generally,
law school briefs include the following elements: The Case Description; The Facts; The Issue;
The Holding; The Rationale; The Disposition; and Dissenting Opinions.
Once again, we break from this tradition as there is too much unnecessary information and
distracting information which can confuse. Therefore, we have streamlined the process. The
best way to see this is to go over each section.
The Case Description: Traditionally this includes the name of the case, the court and date, and
a statement of the procedural history (who is suing whom and how the case got to where it is).
Although this information is straight forward and easily obtained from the case, from our
standpoint, why waste your time?
None of this information will advance your education an iota and it is a waste of time. The
court, the date, the procedural history, even the name of the case will ever be needed on a
law school exam or a Bar exam, and because most of the cases are from out of state courts, if
you do end up practicing law in California (or your own state), the out of state opinions will not
help you in practice either. The only take away here is the case name. Although you will never
need a case name on a law school or Bar exam, the name will be helpful for categorizing your
cases in your mind as related to the rules of law. For example, the Palsgraf case we went over
above.
Beyond that, you do not need to know this information or record it. So, do not waste your
time.
In addition to the information being superfluous, it may also be confusing. For example, not
all courts use the same designation for the parties. You may see plaintiff and defendant or
petitioner and respondent or appellant and appellee, as well as other terms, and to make
matters worse, sometimes the names of the parties (because the way in which appeals were
taken) are reversed. Attempting to decipher all of this and track it is tedious and another
waste of time. All you need to do is place yourself in the story and know who is doing what by
the names they have within the story. Peoples names do not change and neither does the
story, so do not allow the way cases winds around the procedural legal circles distract you.
The Facts: Now this is an important part of the case. This is the story and the story in which
you need to place yourself into when reading the case. Once you are in it, your mind will
record it. You need to live the story so you will always remember it.

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However, if you have read about how to brief cases in other books or online, you may have
read that concerning these cases, not all facts are relevant and law school professors like to
use the irrelevant facts to send out red herrings to students, so when briefing a case, you need
to separate the relevant facts from those which are not.
In the method we have shown you above, there is absolutely no need for you to try and figure
out what facts are relevant and which ones are not. Especially in the beginning of your
education, how would you know anyway? I can tell you, in my first year plus of law school, I
couldn’t tell which were the ones to focus on and the ones to not. Of course, once your mind
is trained, this will become a non-issue as it will be second nature.
But for you just starting out trying to navigate all of this, trying to figure out what is relevant in
the facts and what is not, is another total waste of time. The important part is recording the
story in your mind’s eye. Then, as we will discuss below, the key will be to hone in on what is
the relevant rule of law to be learned from the case (as opposed to other rules in the case
which are superfluous). The rule of law is the key to the breaking the briefing process down
into its simplest form and thus allowing you to disregard the irrelevant material in the case
from the relevant.
The facts are an important part of your ability to learn, as mentioned it is the story which you
virtually lived in. So, do not concern yourself with trying to figure out the relevant facts, and in
your brief, summarize all the facts in a way which will trigger your memory back into the story.
The Issue: Well here again, you are new to law school and new to the law, so this is kind of like
the chicken and the egg syndrome because there are so many issues described within a case,
how are you to know which issue is the main one, or the right one, to be taken from this case
to focus on the rule of law you need to learn. You do not.
For decades and beyond it was this part of the case brief which was the most slippery, the
most elusive and the one in which, I believe was part of what I call the hazing of the law
student. For law school and the ones who test law students in the Bar exams in most of the
United States, there are straight forward rules of law which you are to learn. Each case you
are asked to read contains one of those rules of law which represents something you will be
tested on. But the cases you read have other issues, and sub-issues which “distract” the
student from the core issue.

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Traditional law schools and law professors enjoy these distracters. But from our standpoint,
they are what they are, distracters and a waste of time. You are here to learn the law, and to
learn how to analyze. You are not here to learn how to be tricked by a learned law professor
into going down blind alleys for the fun of it and find out you were a fool for doing so.
Despite that, sometimes the issue in the case is stated in a question and thus becomes
obvious. When you are reading the cases, look for this small marker to identify the issue. I say
this because many other cases will not have a question stated, or sometimes, when it is, it is
not the issue for which you need to learn the rule of law.
The issue, as stated (by you in your brief or as you lifted from the case verbatim) should
contain enough information to articulate the difference between the position of the parties.
When looking for an issue, ask yourself why these parties are in court. What are they fighting
about? What is the gulf between them?
Now with that said, the next section deals with the answer to the question or questions you
have articulated. It is the answer which is the rule of law which you need to take from the
case. And as mentioned, it is the rule of the law and the story memory trigger which are the
two most important ingredients in the entire process.
So, if you are having trouble at first trying to figure out precisely what the issue is or you are
having a hard time articulating it. Do not worry about it. Skip, it for now, as you will be given
it in a later portion of the course. However, we encourage you to read the cases for the issues
and articulate them because it is good practice to attack and decipher legal questions in cases.
But for your exam purposes, both in school and on the Bar, reading the issues of the cases
chosen for you to read will provide insight to you concerning how the Bar Examiners will be
framing their questions. More on that later.
The Holding: The holding is usually a one or two sentence statement of the legal principle
upon which the court’s decision rests. It is an answer to the question asked in the “Issue” and
it is the rule of law to be learned from the case. It is a statement of law that you can read
standing alone or within the context of the case. In some cases, the holding can be lifted
verbatim from the case; in other cases, you will have to rephrase the words. If you have
formulated an “Issue” question, do not just answer this question as yes or no as the holding of
the case. A simple yes or no is not a rule of law to be taken away from the exercise. Although
some of the more complex cases may seem to contain more than one statement in a holding,
they can usually be distilled down into a single statement of a rule of law.

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The Rationale or Discussion: This step outlines the logical steps in the court’s reasoning
process. The purpose of this part of a traditional brief is to help you understand how the court
reached its decision (as opposed to what was decided). Judicial decisions are based upon
rational arguments. Depending on the case, these arguments may be simple or complex. In
this part of a traditional brief, this is a summary of the court’s reasoning and not a restatement
of the court’s opinion.
With that said, this is what we described above in the memory section as the legal “mumbo
jumbo.” Although the court’s reasoning is interesting, except for possibly absorbing some
analysis techniques, this has little to do with advancing yourself in law school or taking the Bar
exam. Thus, this is an unnecessary step and is a time eater. Of course, if you decide to
practice later, these discussions or rationale within the cases will be of tremendous help to you
in formulating your arguments and supporting those arguments with authority. But here
again, in practice you will be citing from authority in your jurisdiction.
Therefore, although you would have read the rationale in the case itself, there is no need to
summarize it your brief. Thus, although this is another section you can skip for you own
personal brief, at least for your first year, it is important you read this material in the cases.
The Disposition: Here is a section of the traditional brief in which some law schools want you
to include it and others do not. Simply, it is a statement of who won and who lost and what
happens procedurally to the case after the decision. This is usually at the end of the case, and
sometimes it is even labeled in the case as disposition.
This is unnecessary information, a time waster and distracter. So, skip this step too.
The Dissenting Opinions: In a dissenting opinion, the judge disagrees with the outcome of the
case and its reasoning of how the majority got there. Frankly, if you are on the dissenting side,
you are on the losing side and the reasoning within the dissenting opinion is also not adopted
by the court. Thus, for law school purposes, there is no value of these opinions and can be a
breeding ground of confusion (as you may remember something you read in a dissenting
opinion forgetting it was a dissent and you include in within your own argument). In fact,
because the dissenters are the losers, they have little worth in the real world of practice either.
When law school case books include these dissenting opinions, they are trying to demonstrate
that there are differing ways of looking at the same problem, and some law schools want you
to summarize the dissent in your brief.

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Concerning whether these opinions have any teaching value for demonstrating that there are
differing ways of looking at the same problem, you already know that from the exercises you
did above. Argue both sides.
You do not need to waste your time reading and summarizing a dissenting opinion to teach
you that. So, skip dissents.
Traditional Brief
Case Description
Katko v. Briney, Supreme Court of Iowa, February 9, 1971, citation 183 N.W.2d 657 (1971)
Marvin Katko, Appellee, v. Edward Briney and Bertha L. Briney, Appellants.
After trial, a jury returned a verdict for plaintiff Marvin Katko. Defendant, Briney filed a
Motion for Judgment Not Withstanding the Verdict (JNOV), which was denied the trial court.
This appeal was brought by Defendant Briney. The lower court was affirmed.
Facts
Defendants inherited an unoccupied farmhouse and over the course of ten years the house
was subject to a series of break-ins. The property sustained considerable damage and despite
boarding up the windows and posting no trespass signs, the incidents continued. Defendants
then set up a shotgun trap, where the gun was secured to an iron bed with its muzzle pointed
at the door. A wire was fastened from trigger to doorknob, pointed in such a manner as to
wound an intruder’s feet. When Plaintiff, having broken and entered on at least one prior
occasion entered, the gun went off, injuring Plaintiff’s right leg. A jury found for the Plaintiff,
awarding both actual and punitive damages.
Issue
Did Defendants employ a reasonable means of preventing the unlawful entry of trespassers on
their property?
Holding
No. The Supreme Court of Iowa affirmed the judgment because the use of spring guns to
protect uninhabited property was not permissible.

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Synopsis of Rule of Law: The value of human life and limb both to an individual and as a matter
of public policy outweighs the potential damage to property. Thus, while a defendant may use
reasonable force in defense of her property, he has no right to injure a trespasser willfully and
intentionally in a manner that may result in loss of life or great bodily injury. The only
exception is when the trespasser is committing a violent felony with the potential of
endangering human life.
Rationale or Discussion
The question presented in Katko centers around the determination of the general privilege of
an owner to defend property and what level of force is reasonable to do so. The ruling in Katko
is consistent with all other areas of tort law about the use of force, the standard being one of
reasonableness. In short, an individual is permitted to use a degree of force commensurate
with the threat with which they are confronted. Thus, as here, where the owner of the
property in question is not faced with a threat of death or grave bodily injury, that owner
cannot do indirectly, by means of “a mechanical device that which, were he present, he could
not immediately do in person.”
Dissent
The dissent opined that the majority wrongfully assumed that by installing a spring gun in the
bedroom of their unoccupied house, the Defendants intended to shoot any intruder who
attempted to enter the room. The dissent frames the issue in the following manner: there
exist two definite issues of fact, i.e., did the Defendants intend to shoot the invader, and if so,
did they employ unnecessary and unreasonable force against him? The dissent asserts that in
its view there is no absolute liability for injury to a criminal intruder by setting up such a device
on his property unless done with an intent to kill or seriously injure the intruder. The dissent
further objected to the awarding of punitive damages, contending that such an award is
“court-made law, not statutory law.” In sum, the dissent maintains that “under such
circumstances as we have here the issue as to whether the set was with an intent to seriously
injure or kill an intruder is a question of fact that should be left to the jury under proper
instructions, and that the mere setting of such a device with a resultant serious injury should
not as a matter of law establish liability.”
Alternative to the Traditional Brief
The brief below is an example of how we believe is the way you should brief your cases. It
eliminates all the clutter and leaves you with the essence of what you need to know, together
with the memory activators (the story and peg).
Katko v. Briney

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Facts:
Defendants inherited an unoccupied farmhouse and over the course of ten years the house
was subject to a series of break-ins. The property sustained considerable damage and despite
boarding up the windows and posting no trespass signs, the incidents continued. Defendants
then set up a shotgun trap, where the gun was secured to an iron bed with its muzzle pointed
at the door. A wire was fastened from trigger to doorknob, pointed in such a manner as to
wound an intruder’s feet. When Plaintiff, having broken and entered on at least one prior
occasion entered, the gun went off, injuring Plaintiff’s right leg.
Issue:
Did Defendants employ a reasonable means of preventing the unlawful entry of trespassers on
their property?
Rule of Law:
Thumbnail; Reasonable Force Only in Defense of Property.
While a defendant may use reasonable force in defense of her property, he has no right to
injure a trespasser willfully and intentionally in a manner that may result in loss of life or great
bodily injury. The only exception is when the trespasser is committing a violent felony with the
potential of endangering human life.
Peg or Memory Connector:

One possibility would be to picture in your mind the universal sign for “No” which is a red
circle with a line through it, and in the middle, is a picture of you firing a gun at a burglar (the
bugler could be the traditional cartoon type dressed in black, with a black mask and carrying a
bag over his shoulder). Of course, this is just a suggestion, but the peg or memory connector
should be anything that works for you which will connect the rule of law to the story and
provide the trigger for quick recall.
Bringing It All Together

OK, a few last thoughts about briefing cases. As you start your courses, you will first be given
cases to read (Part 1 of the course), and then after the cases, you will be given Part 2 of the
course which are case briefs (but not including a memory peg as this will be personal to you).
Do not be tempted to skip reading the cases and go directly to the case briefs. This is because
the case brief only contains a summary of the facts of the case with the rule of law. With that

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you will not be able to read the summary and become part of the story to engage in our
memory technique. Skipping reading the cases will only defeat the system we have outlined,
and if you think you will be saving time, you will be increasing your work load tenfold overall
because you will then have to depend upon the unreliable method of rote memorization of
the rules.
So, read the full case as if you are part of the story and this way the story will be automatically
recorded by your mind. Also, do not read the case as if you were analyzing it, if you do that,
you will be distracted and your mind will not record the story.
This is where the case briefs come in. Once you have read the cases, you can then go to the
case briefs and you will be given the “issue” statement and the “rule of law.” As we
mentioned, it is the rule of law which is what you must know from that case. Also, you are
given the logical deductions of how the court came to its conclusion, that will also be in the
case brief. So, after you read the case, then read the entire case brief, as it will give you the
rule of law, the essentials of analysis and will act as an additional reinforcement for your
memory of the case.
In addition, the case briefs will give you the actual issue statement. This is important to have
because although you have the rules of law, the Bar Examiners when writing questions will
word them in such a way in which just knowing the rules of law, a student could go astray.
Here is where the issue statement is important. Read these from the briefs you are given and
include them in your own brief, because as the way these questions are posed will give you
great insight into how the Bar Examiners may pose a question concerning this rule of law.
This will save you the time of going back to the case and then re-reading it in an analysis mode
to find the rule of law. However, if you wish to take the extra time to re-read the case to find
the actual rule of law, please proceed, and once you believe you have the rule of law, you can
check your results against what the traditional case brief says. The re-read will not only
provide a vehicle of additional memory reinforcement, but will also help hone your ability with
legal analysis both for law school and beyond.
Either way, at that point, it should be easy for you to produce your own case brief by providing
your own summary of the story and then including the rule of law associated with that story
and the issue statement. The only thing remaining will be for you to come up with your peg or
memory connector which will trigger fast recall in the future.

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The key here is that you do produce your own briefs based upon your reading of the cases.
Our techniques for briefing cases are very different from traditional law schools and short
circuit, if you will, most of the clutter, superfluous and unnecessary reading and summarizing.
That will save incalculable amounts of time which you can better spend on learning just what
you need to learn.
Another last word on case briefing. Do not attempt to short cut the system we have outlined
for you here. This system has already short cut the entire way law schools attempt to teach
the material and represents a method in which you can achieve higher results and success in
law school and the Bar exam in less than half the time you will be required to spend in
traditional law schools to get similar results.
What I am also getting at here is later (whether that is 6 months in or even your second year)
you will begin to think that you can short circuit this briefing system too.
In traditional law schools, the briefing of cases is tedious and becomes very boring just after
the students’ first six months of study. After that point, many students look for short cuts. You
may be tempted, but don’t.
One of the favorite shortcuts is highlighting cases. This is a method of briefing a case by which
the student, as he/she reads a case, highlights those portions of the case in which the student
believes should be in a case brief.
This method is a failure from many standpoints. But, I will just mention a few here.
First, let us assume you do not want to follow our method of learning and memory and wish to
go the old fashion way of rote memorization. I can tell you from experience that anyone who
does their case briefs by highlighting the case itself, will never re-read the highlighted portion
of the case later to reinforce the lesson of the case. And if you do not study your own work
again in preparing for exams, but solely rely on other’s work, you will be at a great
disadvantage, because you will have to cram over and over someone else’s work in the hope
of learning and remembering it. Talk about extra time!
The reason many students took to highlighting the cases was to have some preparation for
when a law professor calls on you and puts you on the spot in the classroom. So, if the
student is only doing this for this reason (which most do) what good is it? The student may

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get past the professor during class, but is the student really learning and remembering
anything? Mostly no.
The other reason you should never start briefing cases by the highlighting method is you will
completely circumvent the method of learning the law we are teaching you. Meaning that
when you read a case with the highlighter in mind, you are not reading the case as it is a story
for which you are placing yourself in the middle.
You are then reading the case with a critical and analytical eye, and in that mode, your brain
cannot place you in the story, but has you outside it trying to analyze it. In the analytical mode
of reading a story, your brain does not automatically record the events, as it is trying to figure
the events out as you read them. Of course, your brain has some recall of it, but not on the
level in which you lived it in a virtual world.
Another reason against highlighting cases is that when you are reading the case, you are not
sure what is relevant and what is not. So, you highlight more than you need to. With that, you
will have a lot of superfluous information highlighted and even if you are very studious and
return to your highlighted cases to review them, you will re-read a whole lot of unnecessary
information, which will end up confusing you at exam time.
The thing to take away from all of this is that you can learn the law and the analytical methods
of the law to be able to pass law school and Bar exams at a fraction of the time traditional
schools have taught and continue to teach. Just follow these methods.
Another thought for you to know and understand. As we mentioned above, when you start
your classes (Torts, Contracts etc.), first you will be given cases to read and brief. After the
cases, you will be given the traditional case briefs for the reasons discussed above. After that,
for each section, you will be given a summary of the case law, or rules of law in that section
(Part 3 of the course). This might be considered a course outline of that section of the subject.
Once you brief your cases, you should read that summary. This will help reinforce in your
memory just what you briefed.
But the summary or outline section does more than reinforce your memory. It fills in the gaps.
Every law school professor in different law schools assigns different cases, and sometimes
from different case books for the student to obtain the rules of law. One of the problems is
that, unless the professor assigns 100% of the cases to read and brief, which is 100%
impossible from a time management standpoint, there will be some gaps concerning the rules
of law in which the student needs to learn. Thus, we have provided the section
summary/outline for the secondary purpose of filling in those gaps. This way you will have

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available to you 100% of the rules of law in which you need to know. So, DO NOT SKIP reading
and re-reading your section summaries.
Also, part of our different method of allowing you to learn the material faster and analyze it
better comes at the end of the summary outline section. Here we provide a quick thumbnail
of cases (we call “snap shot” cases) within each section of law you are learning. Again, do not
skip this section either.
Some of the snap shot cases you may have already briefed, but the majority of them you will
not have. Each case only contains about three or four sentences, but it is important you read
them as they will provide not only more memory reinforcement for the rules you just learned,
but more importantly will give you ideas and areas for issue spotting in essay questions. Those
snap shot cases which you have not seen before have another added benefit (which is part of
our program) and that is although they will contain the rules of law very similar to the ones in
the cases you briefed (and thus provide further memory reinforcement), the rules will have
some slightly nuanced differences (shades of gray so to speak), providing you with an
additional depth of knowledge to draw upon and a look at analysis differences. All of which
will serve you very well at exam time in both school exams, and the Bar exam.
These cases are traditional cases given in the top law schools throughout the country, and the
issue statements and answers to them will provide you a valuable tool into being ready to see
these issues in essay exams (as this is where the Bar Examiners get most of their ideas from).
So, this format is designed to get you to start and recognize the different areas of the rules the
Bar Examiners look to test on and how they formulate their questions.
Also, in addition to some of the snap shot cases being repeats of cases you briefed, after you
get into you second and third years, you will have noticed that some of the cases in one class
are found in a different class. We have attempted to pick up as many of these cases as
possible because it helps demonstrate how many of the issues in one class overlap with other
classes (and thus the cross-over questions from the Bar), but also, again, the stories re-read
will enhance your memory even further.
So, when you are sitting for an exam and read an essay question, or even a fact pattern in a
multiple-choice question, very often you will see the same issues in our issue statements as
are presented in the questions you will get on the Bar. Being familiar with the issues will give
more confidence. This is another area of our program which is different from any other
school.

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The goal is for you to be able to not only learn and remember these rules of law, but to recall
them instantly to apply them in a timed essay exam situation. And if you follow the system we
have provided you, apply yourself and study, you should be able to do that successfully and
walk into any exam with confidence.
To review the method of learning:

 Read the entire case in your course materials, with a mind toward putting yourself into the
story and developing a memory peg (dissenting opinions have been eliminated).
 Read the case briefs provided in your course materials.
 Based upon your reading of the entire case and the case brief, develop your own case brief
in the model given in the above example and include the memory peg.
 Read the course outline for that section (all courses are sectioned) for rule of law memory
reinforcement, overview and you will also be given some memory cues in the form of
Mnemonics (a form of word association) from time to time.
 Read the snap shot case briefs at the end of each course outline section for additional rule
of law reinforcement, and analysis enhancement.
If you follow the program we have lined out, read, focus, and study, and do not skip any steps,
you will be ready to take on law school. But note, this is a system, and the system has parts.
Do not use any of the individual parts, and the system weakens. This includes the short
introductions at the beginning of each course. There are different materials and information
in these introductions which is useful and help you more forward. So, follow the system, and
you will be surprised how much easier and less time you have learning this material as
compared to using the old fashion method.
Regarding the analysis section above with breaking down and analyzing each element, this will
become very important in a couple of months after you have been briefing cases. The method
of breaking down and analyzing a rule of law you learned above is the foundation for your
learning how to take law school exams.
Also, as you progress in your courses, in many of the courses you will come to notice that the
section categories for the cases you read to be briefed, do not correspond sequentially with
the section categories of the course outline (which also contain the snap shot cases). This has
been done purposefully because studies have shown that when detailed material to be
studied (which there is much detail in the law) is jumbled up, it causes a student to be more
engaged and thus provides better retention. It is all part of our formula.

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Concerning preparing for exams. Your exam study materials consist of the case briefs you
developed, the course outlines, the approach to exam section, and practice exam questions
with model answers. After studying the course material, then do the practice questions. Do
the first couple of questions with the approach to exam section open and available to you.
After that close it and do the questions on your own and timed (1 hour per question).
Practicing this is important, because your exams are always timed. Thus, you must be quick to
spot the concepts of law (issue spotting) which are contained in the fact pattern question and
then break them down into the individual elements and analyze those elements within the
given time.
Going into exams cold, without this practice, can and probably will be overwhelming
(especially during your first and second years). So, do these practice exams!
IRAC
An acronym which stands for Issue, Rule, Application or Analysis, Conclusion.
Many law schools proffer this method as the only way for law students to proceed with the
case analysis/brief and their essay analysis. Although IRAC is a useful tool, often students get
bogged down in the process and methodology of IRAC, particularly on complex, multi-issue
questions. Thus, getting lost in the process itself, often the substance of the problem takes a
back seat. When this happens, you will lose the forest, not for the trees, but for the weeds
and you will not be able to get all the issues presented in the fact pattern down and analyzed.
It is sufficient to say that all essay exams present legal issues, that they require the
identification of the rules of law, they require the analysis and conclusions based upon your
reasoning. In fact, if you scroll on back to the analysis we did on burglary, larceny, and arson,
you will see that although the structure of IRAC is not predominate, the meat of what the
structure is trying to teach you is there.
However, without the time restraints of a law school essay exam and more within the area of
legal analysis in the real world, the IRAC method presents a very useful structure and tool.
Thus, it is presented here, albeit last in this course. Do not skip this section, because you will
take some useful tools and lessons away from this method which will help you moving forward
with your studies and analysis papers (including legal research and writing).

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Here is the presentation of IRAC:
In analyzing a legal question, the issue must first be clearly and accurately stated. Second, the
applicable rules must be identified. These rules include relevant statutes, case law,
constitutions, and regulations. Third, the rules must be applied to the issue, and, fourth a
logical conclusion must be reached. Regardless of its format, under the IRAC format, a legal
argument must possess these elements or it is incomplete. Let us consider each of these
elements separately and contemplate the potential problems that each one presents.
Issue:
No one can sensibly respond to any question until a question is understood. Although the
statement may seem self-evident, stating the issue is often an obstacle for those learning legal
analysis and a point of contention for those engaging in the litigation process. Therefore, do
not treat the process of constructing an issue statement lightly.
And improperly phrased issue statement can lead to erroneous or misleading conclusions.
Consider the investigation of some infamous murder cases that led to the conviction of
defendants that later prove to be innocent. Many of these misguided investigations got off to a
bad start because the investigators asked the wrong questions. They asked how can I prove
that suspect X committed this murder? Instead of who committed this murder? The former
phrasing of the question diverted investigators down pathways that a more neutral phrasing
would have avoided.
When writing a legal argument, you need not restate the issue every time you consider a
different rule or apply the rule in a different manner. If, for example, the question you were
addressing is whether the parties entered a contract, you need not state that as an issue every
time you consider each of the elements of a contract. Of course, if several issues are involved
or an issue has various subparts, then you must distinguish those issues and clearly identify
which issue you are addressing.
Rules:
The rules involved in legal analysis or much like the rules in any game. These rules establish
the confines in which you must operate. For purposes of legal analysis, these rules include
statutes, ordinances and regulations, case law, constitutional provisions, and executive orders.

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In most legal memorandum, a large percentage of the analysis is devoted to establishing the
rules. Before you can even consider the problems presented in your situation, you must
logically and systematically set forth the principles that will guide your reasoning process.
Therefore, any memorandum must open with a discussion of pertinent case holdings, rules,
statutes, and the like.
Application/Analysis:
Once you have identified the rules, you must apply them to the facts in your own situation
using either inductive or deductive reasoning. Suppose, for example, that a statute relieves
social hosts of any liability should one of their guest injure or a third-party. If your client served
liquor at a party and one of the guests injured someone in a motor vehicle accident because of
being intoxicated, you would use the IRAC method to determine your client’s liability. You
would begin by citing the rule and applying it. Using deductive reasoning, you would argue
that the statute precludes liability for social hosts and since your client was a social host the
client had no duty of care toward the injured party.
Usually, application of the rules will not be quite that straightforward. Conflicting or
ambiguous rules will often be involved, and you will have to determine which is most
applicable. You may, for example, have a group of related cases, none of whose holdings
directly resolve the question in your case. After explaining each case and discussing the
similarities between the cases, you will have to explain which holding is most analogous to
your case and therefore dictates a certain outcome.
If the application of rules can lead to conflicting outcomes, how comprehensive should you be
when constructing your arguments? The answer depends on your purpose in writing the
memorandum. If you are preparing for an attorney for informational purposes or for a
professor for instructional purposes, you should apply the rules in every imaginable way. Since
you are not trying to persuade your reader to reach a certain outcome, you should consider
every reasonable argument. This way the reader can anticipate likely arguments of opponents
and mull over likely rebuttals. If on the other hand, your audience is a court and your intent is
to persuade, you should present your arguments in a manner that best reflects your client’s
position.
In law school, the focus is more on informational memos than persuasive ones. Therefore, you
will need to present all sides of every issue. When first learning to construct legal arguments,
prepare a counter argument for every argument. If you argue that an ambiguous statute

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should be applied to your fact situation, immediately present reasons why statute should not
be applied. If relevant case law suggests that the plaintiff should prevail, prepare a counter
argument that the defendant should prevail. Getting in the habit of contemplating counter
arguments will prevent you from becoming too one sided in your thinking.
Conclusion:
Having pondered all sides of an issue, you may find yourself paralyzed when you must finally
render a conclusion. Nevertheless, good legal analysis requires a conclusion. You can hedge by
indicating that you lack all the facts and, therefore, can offer only a tentative conclusion. You
can suggest the possibility of several conclusions, depending on many variables. But you must
come to some sort of conclusion tentative or not.
Failing to reach a conclusion is a common failing of legal analysis. Having become comfortable
with making arguments and counter arguments, they seem to find something distasteful
about drawing a conclusion. They often complain that they cannot reach a conclusion because
they lack sufficient data. How, they argue, can a realistic conclusion be reached if they don’t
know all the facts?
Two answers come to mind. First, in the actual practice of law, you frequently must draw
conclusions without knowing the whole picture. Until the discovery process is completed, you
have a one-sided perception of the problem at hand because all your information comes from
your client. Even after discovery is completed, factual questions may be unresolved as the
parties continued to disagree about what happened. Second, conclusions drawn from
incomplete data can be acknowledged as tentative. You can admit that you are not privy to
certain critical information. If the unknown facts turn out one way, your conclusion will be X,
but if they turn out another way, your conclusions will be Y. In this way, the reader knows that
you have considered all the contingencies. The bottom line, however, is that you must reach a
conclusion.
Conclusion
This Introduction course has almost concluded. When you see the occasional Intro Course
(either in a law school or outside course), they emphasize IRAC and briefing cases. That is
pretty much it. You are left on your own to figure all the other stuff out, whether that be the

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major issues (e.g. as to how to break down and analyze the rules of law), or minor issues as to
ignoring authority citations and dissents in cases you read.
It is all left out as a kind hazing, but it has been justified over the years as a way of weeding
out the weak. We don’t see you as weak. And we see you as having the capability of
expanding.
The abilities you learn here which include the capture of information, analyzing it in multiple
ways and formulating arguments and contingent conclusions will become powerful utensils of
influence you will have in your tool box throughout your life.
Now that you are finishing this Introduction course, you will be confronted with many cases to
read and brief. Because of the system we are providing you, there is no need to panic. The
system works. Just follow it, do not skip over parts, and do not think you have a better system.
If you do, your chances of passing your exams will decrease.
Here are a couple final words of advice.
First, in the course materials you will see that you are given the cases to brief (Part 1), but also,
after the cases, you are given the case already briefed cases (Part 2) in an abbreviated
traditional format which contains the rule of law which you must know.
As mentioned above, it is very tempting to skip reading the actual case and go straight for the
case brief. Do NOT do this. That practice will put you into the land of having to memorize the
rules of law via rote. There are countless students who do this thinking they will short cut the
system and save themselves time. They are not only not saving time, they are creating a larger
hill to climb and it shows in the Bar pass rates and the school dropout rates.
It is very important that you read the entire cases you are assigned start to finish. And read
them in the fashion we described in the memory section concerning the case being a story
where you are actively involved in the story. We fully recognize that each of these cases
contain more material in them outside of the story, but this information does the analysis to
extract the rule of law. Do not worry about that. Read and remember the story.
Once you finish reading the case and you have the story, then read the case brief provided.
That will provide the rule of law which you need to know and the issue question. Then as

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described in the memory section, you need to use your own personal peg or clue to connect
the story which is in your memory to the rule of law provided in the case brief.
Once you have the two connected, you will have a flawless memory. Of course, we also
provided the course summaries (Part 3) for additional reinforcement (and fill in the gaps). All
of which must be read. It is like building a pyramid, start from the base, and keep building
upward to the pinnacle.
With this, you will be able to succeed in school, in taking the Bar and anything else you wish to
do.
So, Enjoy Your New Journey!

Side-Bar Method Intro To Law v1.1

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Side-Bar Method Intro To Law v1.1

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VERSION 1.

THE SIDE-BAR METHOD

THE SIDE-BAR METHOD

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INTRODUCTION, ORIENTATION & ANALYSIS BASICS© 1

Bringing It All Together

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Welcome to Side Bar!

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people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist

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As opposed to statutes—legislative acts that proscribe certain conduct by demanding or

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Analyze whether a burglary occurred.

Write your analysis down.

Analysis of First Scenario:

Breaking & Entering:

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Intent to Commit a Felony:

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Analyze whether a burglary occurred.

Write your analysis down.

Analyze whether a burglary occurred. Write your analysis down.

Analysis of Second Scenario:

Breaking & Entering:

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Intent to Commit a Felony:

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Analysis of Third Scenario:

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Dwelling House of another:

Intent to Commit a Felony:

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Palsgraf v Long Island R.R. Co. (1928) 248 NY 339

Plaintiﬀ was standing on a platform of defendant's railroad after buying a ticket to go to

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