Case Analysis
This domain tests how you convert a raw brief - witness statements, documents and a client's narrative - into a structured legal analysis that supports a case theory, a proof plan and an advice. The examiner rewards issue identification, element-by-element reasoning and a realistic appraisal of the opponent's case, not a summary of the facts.
Start from the objective and the elements
- Fix the client's outcome first (acquittal, damages, injunction, reduced charge), because the objective decides which facts are material.
- Break each cause of action or charge into its elements as the applicable law states them, not as you remember them.
- For each element ask: what must be proved, by whom, to what standard, and with what evidence?
Build a proof matrix
A grid with one row per element and columns for the fact relied on, the witness or document proving it, the exhibit reference, the opponent's likely answer and a risk rating. The empty rows are the case: they tell you what to obtain, what to plead around and what to concede early.
Formulate a case theory
One paragraph explaining who did what and why, which accounts for the single most damaging fact rather than ignoring it. A theory that cannot absorb the bad fact collapses under cross-examination.
Worked example
Your client is charged with stealing stock from an employer. Elements: property belonging to another, appropriation, dishonesty, intention permanently to deprive. The shortage and the client's key-holder status are proved and cut both ways. Dishonesty is the battleground. The matrix shows no reliable stock count for eleven weeks and unexplained entries in the alarm log. The theory becomes: the loss is a systems and record-keeping failure, not a taking. Cross-examination of the stock controller therefore attacks count methodology and reconciliation dates, not the controller's honesty. Notice how the theory dictates the questions - that link is what the exam is testing.
Traps that cost marks
- Analysing law before the facts are organised, producing a textbook answer to a factual problem.
- Treating every fact as equally important, with no materiality filter.
- Leaving the strongest adverse fact unaddressed in the theory.
- Confusing the legal burden with the evidential burden.
- Presenting a hunch as a theory without a proof route to each element.