Learning Legal Analysis Through Its Components: Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion—IRAC

The purpose of this exercise is to help students—especially first-year students—understand the process of legal analysis and improve their legal writing and legal analysis skills. Specifically, students will work on their ability to apply the law to the facts of a problem.

The program focuses on the four basic components of legal analysis, namely: issue, rule of law, application of the law to the facts, and conclusion (IRAC). In the first part of the exercise, the students will work with each of these components individually. In the second part, students will work with a small closed universe situation. They will be given the facts of a problem and the law appropriate to the problem and will be asked to work through the full legal analysis process.

The skills taught in this program can be used in drafting all kinds of legal documents such as memoranda of law, memoranda of points and authorities, client letters, demand/negotiation letters, and briefs. The IRAC approach is also very useful in exam taking.

The program is designed to be simple in its approach so that students can take full advantage of it at a very early stage of their law school career.