Discuss with your partner how it may help or hurt each legal element of your case.

Step 1: Shepardize each case to determine its precedential value: In general, cases fall into one of three categories:
(a) Overturned by later case law or legislation (No longer good law and therefore worthless as precedent);
(b) Still good law but outside the current court’s jurisdiction or from a trial court level (Useful as persuasive authority only); or
(c) determined by an appellate court in your jurisdiction AND not overturned by any authority (Binding precedent that must be followed by the court). (Obviously, there are also various levels of precedent within these categories, such as when a case has not been overturned but has been given negative treatment.)
Step 2: Carefully read each case that could possibly have either binding or persuasive authority in your jurisdiction. Discuss with your partner how it may help or hurt each legal element of your case.

Analyze each case from the case bank given for your Mock Trial Scenario. Ensure that each analysis contains the following:

A. Describe the precedential value of the case, using a 1-2 sentence summary.
B. State whether, based on your analysis, the overall impact of the case is HELPFUL, HARMFUL or has NO IMPACT on your client’s side of the Mock Trial.
C. In YOUR OWN WORDS, provide a brief summary of the facts of the case (what happened), the verdict (who won), and the law (why did they win?).
D. List which of your Mock Trial’s legal elements (if any) are affected by this case. (You may use the element breakdown provided for Trial Prep 1.)
E. For each legal element affected, explain IN YOUR OWN WORDS how the case helps or hurts your side of that legal element. Be as specific as possible. (You may need to provide an analogy of how the facts or law in the case might connect with your assigned Mock Trial case.)

Note: attached is everything you need to know before doing the case analysis: case scenario, case summary, case analysis sample (please follow the format on the sample), and the two cases to analyze.

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