What you're actually hunting for
- The material facts. Not all the facts — the ones the decision turned on. Change these and the outcome changes; that's the test.
- The legal issue. The precise question the court had to answer, usually narrower than you'd think.
- The holding. What the court decided on that issue.
- The ratio decidendi. The reasoning necessary to the decision. This is the only part that binds. It is frequently one or two sentences buried in the middle of a very long judgment.
- Obiter dicta. Everything else the judge said. Interesting, quotable, persuasive — and not binding. Students routinely learn obiter as though it were law.
- Dissents. Not law, and often the most intellectually useful part — and the part that becomes law in twenty years.
Read it in the right order
Start with the headnote to orient yourself, then the outcome, then work *backwards* into the reasoning that produced it. Reading forwards from page one means holding ninety pages of facts with no idea which of them will turn out to matter — you are storing everything because you cannot yet tell what is relevant.
Then argue with it
The exam does not ask you to recite the case. It asks you to apply it to facts that are deliberately not quite the same — so the questions that matter are: what exactly was the principle, how far does it stretch, and what would have to change for it to stop applying?