Aside from the codals and the thick textbooks that provide a good arm workout, law students also have to go through hundreds of cases per semester. This gives the would-be attorneys a chance to see the application of the statutes to real-life issues. It is standard for professors to ask students to not only read but also make summaries of the cases, called case digests.
A case digest consists of the summary of the facts, the issues, and the ruling of the Supreme Court. A case could be as short as two pages or as long as a hundred.
I made my first case digest before I enrolled in law school. My mentor asked me to pick any case and digest it. I looked up landmark cases online and decided to go with In Re: Florencio Mallare (AM No. 533, September 12, 1974). The case was just six pages long, excluding the footnotes. It took me three readings before I felt I was ready to take notes. I thought everything was important. I took notes of all the dates, the names of witnesses and their relation to the respondent, etc., which were not that important to the main issue.
I made four pages of notes on the six-page case, but I still didn’t know how to start the digest. Finally frustrated, I looked for a sample digest of the said case online. I was taken aback by its length. It was so short that I was ashamed of how long my notes were. It was then that I got the gist of how case digests should be.
During the first few weeks of law school, I learned that only the issues related to the topic you will be discussing should be included. This is because case digests are basically your guide during recitations, and the professor will be asking about the issues that will help you understand the topic more. I made the mistake of fussing over all the issues that had nothing to do with our lesson.
My case digests have improved since the first failed attempt, but the pressure and stress of making multiple digests in a week and familiarizing them hardly do. But these towers of readings, digesting, and recitations are what make law school more memorable.
It's a Ping Thing 