“Legal problem solving (identifying and diagnosing problems and generating strategies and tactics to achieve client goals) is the most basic function of a legally trained person. Most legal problem solving activities involve some legal analysis: combining the law and the facts to generate, justify and evaluate the merits of the legal problem” (Legal Services Practice Manual: Skills, 2010)

All lawsuits arise as a result of disputes involving facts. Our legal system revolves around dispute resolution through the application of rules of law to the facts of a case. Yes, trials and appeals are all about “law,” but remember that the trial court judge, or jury, is known as the “judge of fact.” Findings of fact are so important that the Bill of Rights guarantees that the facts, once decided by a jury, are virtually the last word. The seventh amendment states that, “…no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of common law.” This clause prohibits any court from re-examining or overturning findings of fact made by a jury, unless the findings of fact are clearly erroneous.

The two main components of the dispute resolution process are the applicable law and the facts of the dispute. In the professional practice of law, you will review the case file to identify which of the hundreds or thousands of facts produced by discovery (for example, witness statements, deposition transcripts, responses to interrogations, photographs, and correspondence) are “key” . ” facts. Key facts are those facts that are critical to the outcome of the case. A key fact is so essential that if it were changed, the outcome of the case might well be different.

In law school, you’re practicing this fact-focusing skill: In order for you to learn how to evaluate legal problems, you must be able to find the important facts… the key facts, the facts on which the outcome of the problem is based. . in question depends. When writing an answer to a law school essay exam question, you must discover these salient facts from all the facts presented in the narrative. Think of them as keys that open discussions on punctuation issues.

But how? Here are the basic steps in determining which facts are key facts.

• Identify each claim possibly raised by the test question.
• Indicate the rules that will be used to resolve each issue of each claim. These rules include the elements that must be addressed in the discussion of each topic.
• Point out which facts in the question are likely to relate to the elements of those problems.

This last step consists of determining which facts may be legally significant. Legally significant facts may be, for example, that a tenant with an eviction notice has never had a hot water supply; or that the shooter was an off-duty police officer; or that one of the parties to a contract was a minor; or that the geographical distance between the provocative incident and the murder may have been long enough to provide adequate time for a reasonable person to “cool off” the heat of her passion.

After outlining your answer, read the test question one more time carefully and quickly (you should be fairly familiar with the question at this point, so the reading can be much faster than the first time). Make sure you have assigned all the facts presented in the hypothetical question (the exam) to some problem. Otherwise, ask yourself if these facts suggest another problem, can be used to further explain a problem you already noted, or are simply “red herrings” (facts in the question that could lead to the wrong discussion). Then use this fact-rich outline as a roadmap to answer the question. Note that your outline doesn’t need to include explanations of why the facts are important – the detailed analysis comes in your answer. The outline is just your writing guide.

As for the outline, you may want to follow a traditional outline pattern (bullets, hierarchies, mind maps, etc.)…or, to accentuate fact-finding, you may want to think about a two-column approach. . You can summarize your answer using two separate columns. Specifically, you can list the issues in one column and then write down the facts that need to be discussed in relation to those rules in the next column. This method will allow you to relate the legal issues or subtopics to the facts of the question. By skimming through the question quickly (again) before writing the essay, you can quickly notice if you’ve missed a fact.

Long before you face the exams, strive to recognize the key facts. Focus on the key facts when reporting cases to the class. Some students find that including basic fact patterns in their self-made course outlines, such as illustrations of the rules that appear on the outlines, helps them think about the rules in situational terms.

Many years ago, when I was a little boy, the fictional Los Angeles Police Sergeant Joe Friday, hero of the TV series “Dragnet,” used to say to witnesses he interviewed, “All we want is the facts.” . Well, there’s more to it than that when you’re trying to get a high score on a law school writing test… but Sgt. Friday focused on one of two essential components: you should too!