Casebook Builder

Casebook Builder is the Project’s tool for turning a faculty member’s case list into a custom course casebook. Give it the cases you want; it fetches the full opinions, edits them down to casebook form — main cases, squibs, contrast cases, comprehension and discussion questions, and explanatory notes — and assembles them into units and a finished book ready for student distribution. It came out of a faculty conversation about the $300–500 commercial casebook problem: AI plus the right tooling should let faculty assemble exactly the casebook their course needs at a fraction of the cost.

Tom Baker’s Torts casebook, built with the tool, shipped in August 2026 and is live with students this fall — the Project’s first complete casebook. Two more pilots follow in Spring 2027: Polk Wagner building Patent Law, and Ted Ruger building Legislation.

What we’re doing

• Curation layer: given a syllabus or case list, help faculty choose which cases — and which parts of each — belong in the book.
• Editing layer: edit full opinions down to the doctrinal core (main case, squib, contrast case), and generate author-style material — comprehension questions, deeper discussion questions, doctrinal and policy notes.
• Use the Course Materials extraction layer to ingest source cases, so the input pipeline is consistent with the rest of the Teaching Tools cluster.
• Assembly: group materials into units and compile a finished casebook — table of contents, subject index, table of cases, list of authorities — in print-ready and student-readable formats.
• Run the pilots and document the workflow for other faculty who want to build their own casebooks.

Why this matters

Commercial casebooks are expensive, slow to update, and rarely a perfect fit for any specific course. A tool that lets faculty build exactly the casebook they want — with their case selection, their notes, their problems — pulls a lot of value back to the people designing the course. The cost story (students paying $500 for a book the faculty member would happily replace) is the immediate motivation; the pedagogical fit is the bigger one.

Status

Active. Torts (Tom Baker) shipped August 2026 and is live with students this fall — the tool’s first complete casebook. Patent Law (Polk Wagner) and Legislation (Ted Ruger) pilots are next, both targeting Spring 2027.