A study guide
Every judgment runs for pages, the ratio is buried in the middle, and on exam day you have names but no understanding. This is a method for reading, understanding and remembering cases. No secrets, just a loop that works.
Built by a law student, with the students who use it.
On this page
The problem is not you. Cases are written for lawyers and judges, not for students meeting the law for the first time.
A judgment is written for lawyers who already know the law around it. The judge does not stop to explain what a duty of care is.
Pages of facts and argument, then the two or three sentences that actually change the law, somewhere in the middle.
You read Donoghue v Stevenson without knowing what the law was the day before it, or what later courts did with it.
The case is about a snail in a bottle. Your problem question is about a defective car part. The bridge between them is the part you are marked on.
Start with the question, see the story, brief it yourself, then connect it. The same four steps for every case you read.
Write down the question you are actually trying to answer, in plain words. Then find the cases that answer it. Starting from a case name means reading a whole judgment before you know whether it is relevant.
Find out where the case sits in its doctrine: what the law was before it, what it changed, and what later courts did with it. A case read without that story is a name to memorise; a case read with it is a turn you can explain.
Issue, rule, analysis, conclusion, one short line each. Write the rule as it stood before the case and as it stood after. Keep only the two or three sentences of reasoning that explain why it changed.
File the case under its topic, note which past exam questions it would answer, and link it to the cases on either side of it in the timeline. In exam season you revise a handful of timelines, not a hundred loose names.
LexCases is built around this loop: you search by problem, see the doctrine's timeline, and save cases to your modules with notes you write yourself. See how it works.
Duty of care did not arrive fully formed in 1932. It was built, narrowed and rebuilt over more than a century. Read one case without the rest and you miss why it mattered.
[1932] AC 562
Lord Atkin's neighbour principle. A manufacturer owes a duty to the consumer, contract or no contract.
[1932] AC 562
If you only learn Donoghue, you miss that Caparo narrowed it, and that Robinson then told courts not to reach for Caparo every time. The timeline is the why, not just the what.
IRAC works when each part is one short line, not a copy of the judgment in four boxes. Write the rule before the case and after it, and keep only the reasoning that explains the change.
Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562
Does a manufacturer owe a duty of care to the person who ends up consuming its product, when there is no contract between them?
Before: outside a few narrow categories, no duty in negligence without a contract. After: you owe a duty to your neighbour, anyone so closely and directly affected by what you do that you ought reasonably to have them in mind.
Lord Atkin: "You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour." A manufacturer who sends out goods meant to reach the consumer with no chance of inspection on the way owes that consumer reasonable care.
By three to two, the House of Lords held that Mrs Donoghue's pleaded case disclosed a cause of action. Privity of contract no longer blocks a claim in negligence. The case itself never reached a trial of the facts.
A brief like this fits on one card. Write it yourself: the writing is the learning.
Highlighting a judgment feels like work and leaves little behind. Pulling the case back out of your own memory is what makes it stay.
Start with your own short brief. Go to the full judgment only when you need the detail.
What was the issue? What did the case change? Then check what you missed.
Come back to it a day later, a week later and a month later. Each return costs less than the last.
Two hours on one judgment and three sentences remembered. Start with the brief; open the full judgment only when the brief leaves a question open.
You can recite Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 but cannot say what it changed. Write the before and the after for every case.
A hundred names in your notes and no connections. Group them by doctrine and put each one on its timeline.
An AI tool can write a confident brief for a case that does not exist. Confirm every citation against the source before it goes near an essay.
Pick one doctrine this week and build its timeline, case by case. LexCases is free to start, with 28 jurisdictions on equal terms. See what the free plan includes.
LexCases is not a faceless company. It is built by a law student who sat through the same reading lists, and it is shaped by the students who use it.
If something is missing, or something reads wrong, say so. That is how the tool gets better. Tell us what you need.
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Built by a law student, for the ones still in the library. And the juniors with a hearing at nine.
What you stop doing
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