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How to write a case note: Australian law school guide

A case note is the first genuinely legal piece of writing most law students are asked to produce, and the instructions rarely say the one thing that matters: a case note is not a summary. A summary retells what the court did. A case note explains what the decision means, why the reasoning holds or wobbles, and what changed in the law because of it. Markers can tell within one paragraph which of the two they are reading.

This page sets out a structure that works for Australian law school case notes, the tense and language conventions that make it read professionally, and the specific traps that catch students writing in a second language. Always check your own subject's rubric first; where your lecturer's structure differs from this one, the lecturer wins.

What a case note is, and what it is not

Think of the case note as answering four questions in order: what happened, what the court had to decide, how and why it decided, and why anyone should care. The first two questions are description and should be brief. The last two are analysis, and they are where the marks live. If your draft spends most of its words retelling facts and quoting the judgment, it is a summary wearing a case note's clothes.

The structure that works

1. Citation and procedural position

Open with the full citation in AGLC4 form, for example Australian Woollen Mills Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth (1953) 92 CLR 424, then one or two sentences of procedural context: which court decided it, and how the matter got there (a trial decision, an appeal from a lower court, an application for special leave). The citation patterns themselves are covered in AGLC4 citation errors international students actually make; a case note with a mangled citation loses trust in its first line, so check it twice.

2. Material facts

Material facts are the ones the reasoning turns on. A useful test: if you changed this fact, could the outcome have changed? If yes, it is material. If no, cut it. Dates, amounts and party backstory usually fail this test; the specific act or omission at the heart of the dispute always passes it. Aim for one short paragraph. Writing the facts last, after you understand the reasoning, makes it much easier to see which ones matter.

3. The issues

State the questions the court had to answer, as questions. "Whether an offer capable of acceptance had been made" is an issue. "The case is about contract law" is not. Most decided cases turn on one or two real issues; finding them is itself analysis, because judgments discuss many things and only some of them decide the outcome.

4. The decision and the reasoning

Report the outcome in one sentence, then reconstruct the reasoning: the rule the court started from, the steps it took, and where the parties' arguments were accepted or rejected. If the bench split, say who decided what; a strong dissent is often the most useful material in the whole judgment for your comment section.

5. Ratio and obiter

The ratio decidendi is the legal rule necessary for the outcome, stated at the level of generality the reasoning supports. Obiter dicta are the observations along the way: remarks about hypotheticals, about arguments not pressed, about how a different case might go. Separating them is the technical core of a case note. One sentence each, explicitly labelled, shows the marker you can do it: "The ratio of the decision is that ... In obiter, the Court observed that ..."

6. Significance and comment

This section is why the assignment exists. What did the decision settle, unsettle or leave open? Has it been followed, distinguished or criticised since? Does the reasoning rest on a step that deserves scrutiny? Two or three developed points beat six shallow ones. This is also the section to write toward from the start: if you know your comment, everything earlier can be trimmed to serve it.

The tense rules

Legal English has a fixed tense convention for writing about decided cases, and drifting from it is one of the most visible second-language errors:

The switch happens mid-note, exactly where description becomes analysis, and that is what makes it hard: "The Court held that no contract existed. The decision stands for the proposition that ..." Read your draft once checking only verbs, and the drift will show itself.

Criticising a judge without being disrespectful

If you learned to write in an academic culture where criticising authority is presumptuous, this part of the assignment can feel genuinely uncomfortable. Say it plainly: Australian markers expect respectful critique, and a case note with no evaluation reads as incomplete, not as polite. The register for doing it safely is the same professional hedging used everywhere in Australian legal writing (covered fully in Legal English register):

Notice that every one of these criticises reasoning, never the judge. That is the whole etiquette: argue with the argument.

Sentence starters for each section

A self-check list before you submit

  1. Could a reader who has never read the judgment state the ratio after reading your note? If not, the analysis is buried.
  2. Apply the materiality test to every fact you kept. Cut what fails.
  3. Check the verbs: past for what happened, present for what the law now is.
  4. Count the words spent describing versus analysing. If description dominates, rebalance before polishing anything else.
  5. Check the citation against the AGLC4 pattern, including italics and the pinpoint comma.
  6. Read your comment section aloud. Every criticism should target a step of reasoning, with a hedge that matches your confidence.

If you would like feedback on a case note draft before you submit it, Legal Writing Lab is a free feedback tool for international law students writing Australian legal English. It flags the issues in your draft, explains the rule behind each one, and never writes your work for you.