Law Commons^™

Thinking Like A Lawyer: The Heuristics Of Case Synthesis, Jane Gionfriddo

Jane Kent Gionfriddo

In a common law system where cases play such an important role in legal problem-solving, lawyers must be able to synthesize ideas from groups of cases to figure out a jurisdiction's law at a particular point in time; in reality, however, many lawyers aren't able to do so well enough for sophisticated law practice. Some lawyers understand and use this skill intuitively, but do not consciously think about the steps they actually take. Those in this group often do not sufficiently value case synthesis because it seems so obvious, with the result that they don't necessarily use this skill to …