Exam Technique

How to Memorise Case Names for Law Exams

Practical techniques for locking in case names, citations, and holdings before your LLB or SQE exam.

Most law students try to memorise case names by reading them over and over. It doesn't work. Passive re-reading is probably the least effective revision method known to cognitive science, and law exams punish it harder than almost any other subject because you don't just need to recognise the name, you need to retrieve it under pressure and deploy it accurately.

Here's what actually works.

Understand What You Actually Need to Recall

Before you build any memory system, get clear on what an examiner wants. In most UK law exams, you need three things from a case:

1. The name (and ideally the year, especially for landmark cases)
2. The legal proposition it stands for (the ratio, or the specific test)
3. Enough of the facts to illustrate the rule or distinguish it from another case

You do not need to know every fact. You do not need to recite the full citation in most undergraduate exams, though SQE candidates should know commonly-tested citations because the assessments can be very specific. Prioritise accordingly.

For a case like [Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562](https://www.getcaselaw.com/case-library/7c984837-f0b3-4afc-a73f-3ec96f6e4756), you need: the neighbour principle and the three-part Caparo refinement that came later. You need enough of the facts (decomposed snail, opaque bottle, no direct contract) to show the court's reasoning. You don't need to know the name of Mrs Donoghue's friend or anything about the Scottish procedural history.

Strip each case to its core payload before you try to memorise anything.

Build a Case Card for Every Case You Learn

A case card is not just a summary. It's a retrieval prompt. The difference matters.

A summary is what you write after reading a case. A retrieval prompt is something designed to force your brain to reconstruct the information from scratch. The reconstruction is the learning. Every time you successfully retrieve something you'd half-forgotten, you make that memory stronger.

For each case, write (or type, or use a flashcard tool) something like this:

Front: Donoghue v Stevenson [1932], what did it establish in negligence?

Back: The neighbour principle. A manufacturer owes a duty of care to the ultimate consumer of their product where the consumer has no opportunity to inspect it and damage is a foreseeable result of negligence. Lord Atkin. Snail in ginger beer.

That's it. Short, specific, testable. The Caselaw flashcard tool lets you do exactly this for cases you're studying, which saves a lot of setup time.

The mistake students make is writing case cards that are too long. If your card takes 90 seconds to read, you'll avoid it. Keep the back of the card to four or five lines maximum.

Use Spaced Repetition, Not Cramming

Spaced repetition is the single most evidence-backed technique for long-term retention. The idea is simple: review material at increasing intervals. Review it again just before you'd naturally forget it. Each successful recall pushes the next review further into the future.

In practice, this means:

• Week one: learn the case, review it the next day
• Week two: review it twice more, spacing those reviews out
• Week three and beyond: review it once a week until the exam

Cramming the night before an exam can get you through a multiple choice question. It will not help you when you're halfway through a 45-minute problem question and need to recall not just Rylands v Fletcher but also how it interacts with the rule from [Goldman v Hargrave [1967] 1 AC 645](https://www.getcaselaw.com/case-library/2de6b602-0fbb-4e84-8b76-24804347ca0a) on occupier liability for naturally occurring hazards. That kind of layered application requires genuine memory, not last-minute surface familiarity.

Start building your case card deck in week one of term, not week nine.

Attach Cases to Stories, Not Abstractions

The brain remembers stories far better than propositions. When you think about [Rylands v Fletcher [1868] UKHL 1](https://www.getcaselaw.com/case-library/65ecd889-4647-4539-89bf-365ec68f274b), don't just think "strict liability for non-natural use of land." Think: a reservoir contractor builds badly, water floods a mine, the mineowner gets nothing from the contractor so he sues the landowner who hired them. The court holds: if you bring something onto your land that is likely to do mischief if it escapes, you're liable if it does.

The story gives you a hook. When you see a problem question about a homeowner storing industrial chemicals that leak into a neighbour's basement, your brain doesn't have to search through an abstract list of propositions. It has a story it can match against.

For cases with memorable facts, this is easy. For cases with drier facts, manufacture a hook. Hedley Byrne v Heller [1964]: a bank gives a glowing credit reference and then disclaims liability when the client collapses. The bank escapes, but the Lords establish the principle. "The bank escaped on the disclaimer" is sticky. The disclaimer becomes your anchor.

Group Cases by Principle, Not by Module Week

Lecture notes and textbooks organise cases chronologically or by topic week. Your memory needs to organise them differently: by the legal principle they support, and by how they relate to each other.

Take the negligence duty of care sequence:

• Donoghue v Stevenson [1932]: the origin, the neighbour principle
• Anns v Merton LBC [1978]: the two-stage test (proximity, then no policy reasons to limit)
• Caparo Industries v Dickman [1990]: the three-part test that replaced it (foreseeability, proximity, fair just and reasonable)
• Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2018]: the Supreme Court's clarification that Caparo is not a universal test, just a tool for novel situations

When you group them like this, each case becomes part of a sequence. You learn the story of how the law developed, and each case anchors the next one. If you forget whether Caparo came before or after Anns, the story tells you: the courts tried a broad two-stage approach, got criticised for over-extending liability, and then tightened up with three parts. The sequence is logical, and logic is memorable.

Do this grouping exercise for every major area you're revising. It takes an hour per topic and it replaces dozens of isolated case cards with a coherent structure.

The Name Itself: Mnemonics and Visual Anchors

Sometimes the name is the problem. You know what the case stands for, but you blank on who the parties were. A few techniques help here.

Use the name literally. Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co tells you almost everything: there's a person (Carlill), there's a product (smoke ball), and the company thought they could advertise a cure without being bound by it. The name is basically the facts. Train yourself to read case names for the information they contain.

Create a visual image. For Balfour v Balfour [1919], the classic domestic agreement case, picture two people with the same face (they're related? no, married) shaking hands over nothing, because the agreement never had legal force. Odd images stick.

Use the party's role as a cue. In Carlill, the company is the defendant because they didn't want to pay out on their own offer. In Hartley v Ponsonby [1857], Ponsonby is the ship captain who left his crew short-handed. These professional roles are often easier to remember than names, and they anchor the facts.

Link the year to context where you can. Donoghue v Stevenson is 1932: between the wars, manufacturing is booming, consumers have no real protection. Donoghue is the courts stepping in. If you know any history, the 1930s date makes the policy context feel real.

How to Handle Very Similar Case Names

Some areas of law have clusters of cases with confusingly similar names. Contract law has half a dozen cases with "Balfour" or "Williams" in them. Equity has cases that start with "Re" and a surname that you'll mix up constantly.

For these clusters, you need a distinguishing feature you can attach to each name. Don't try to learn them in isolation.

Re Recher's Will Trusts [1972] and Re Denley's Trust Deed [1969] both appear in purpose trusts discussions, and students mix them up every year. The fix is to attach a concrete difference:

• Recher: a members' club subscription fund. The trust failed because it wasn't directly for the benefit of ascertainable individuals.
• Denley: a sports ground for employees. Goff J held it was valid because it was directly or indirectly for the benefit of individuals who could enforce it.

Now you have a contrast. Whenever you see a purpose trust problem in an Equity and Trusts question, you think: can specific individuals enforce this? If yes, Denley keeps it alive. If it's a club fund with no identifiable beneficiaries, Recher says it fails.

The contrast is the memory device.

Active Recall Beats Highlighting Every Time

One final point on technique. When you're revising, close the book. Put your notes face-down. Write down every case you can recall from a topic, with the proposition and one key fact. Then check.

This is uncomfortable. That discomfort is the point. The struggle to retrieve is what makes the memory durable. Students who highlight and re-read feel productive. Students who test themselves feel stressed. The second group consistently outperforms the first.

Set yourself a five-minute drill before every revision session: blank page, topic heading at the top, go. You'll quickly learn which cases you actually own and which ones you've only skimmed.

The Caselaw flashcard tool is built around this principle. Use it in active recall mode, not as a reading exercise.