Much of the material below is adapted from Drew Loewe, Undergraduate Legal Writing: an Open Resource, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License, found at https://drew-m-loewe.gitbook.io/undergraduate-legal-writing-an-open-resource.

Except for purely legal issues, such as issues about the meaning of a rule, every objective analysis (such as in a predictive memorandum) or persuasive argument (such as in motion papers filed in court) is rule-based. That is, it centers on how a given legal rule does, or does not, fit a particular set of facts.

11.1 IRAC Organization

In this course, you will learn that when analyzing or arguing a legal issue, you should follow an organizational form that goes by the abbreviation IRAC (“eye-rack”). There are other organizational forms for legal writing, but IRAC is most common.

IRAC is the organizational form for analyzing or arguing about a single issue governed by a single legal rule. This course centers on single-issue legal analyses or arguments. However, it can also be used in multiple-issue situations, as long as you follow the format for each separate issue. IRAC is just a way to organize your writing to apply the law to the facts to solve a legal issue.

Here is a chart of the organization of a single legal analysis or argument that does rule-based reasoning:

Chart 11.1 IRAC Organization

At its core, a single legal argument or analysis is about applying a legal rule to the relevant facts of a particular case. Here is a complete legal analysis in a straightforward case, a small kernel of what IRAC does:

Activity 11.1 Simple Legal Analysis

Example 11.1: Application in a Letter

You can use this type of simple rule application when you write certain kinds of legal genres, such as some client letters. Here is a sample client letter with a single legal analysis:

Dear Mr. Smith:

I write to follow up on our July 8th meeting.

On March 11 this year, you were issued a ticket for speeding on Delaware Avenue and were charged with driving at 45 mph in a 30-mph zone. You want to challenge that charge (ISSUE) because your license already has three speeding violations, and your insurance company will not renew your policy if you get a fourth violation.

If we ask for a trial to contest the ticket, you will lose because the speed limit on Delaware Avenue is 30 mph, (RULE) and police radar shows you were traveling at 45 mph. Police officers are trained to demonstrate that their radar equipment is properly calibrated and accurately used. (APPLICATION) Thus, the prosecutor will be able to show that you were in violation of Municipal Code §789.2 (CONCLUSION). Please let me know how you wish to proceed before our court appearance on August 22.

I strongly suggest that we enter plea negotiations with the city prosecutor. She will probably agree to reduce the charge to a non-moving violation because the city can keep any money that it collects from fining you due to a non-moving violation. In contrast, the state would get the money collected for a speeding conviction fine.

(Signature)

That is a simple example of Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion.
However, most legal issues are based on rules that include terms that are more complex or open to interpretation than a simple speeding ordinance. When writing a memo or brief, you will often need to add an explanation of the key terms that define the rule and apply the same key terms to the facts of your case. Sometimes, we might call the Rule a Rule Explanation section if this is necessary, especially if you need to find a rule by putting together several cases. It is, therefore, perfectly fine to explain your rules a little when necessary—you’ll see this in an example below.

11.2 Tips for Rule Explanations

• A rule explanation should consist of the rule’s essential terms, which are the words or phrases at the heart of the issue of how the rule applies.
• Use your explanation to clearly and concisely identify the key terms that a court would likely consider when analyzing the particular issue that you are writing about.
• Ground your explanation in mandatory authority.
• Except for the key terms, avoid overreliance on the court’s actual language, which can result in an awkward series of quotes. For concise
rule explanations, use ellipses and minimize the use of block quotations.

Example 11.2: IRAC Example: Rule-Based Writing

Let’s see what IRAC looks like in a fleshed-out legal argument. Below is an IRAC rule-based argument. It is an excerpt from a brief filed by a prisoner who is opposing the government’s attempt to defeat his civil rights case without the need for a trial (this is called a “summary judgment”). Later, you will find this same annotated IRAC, with reasoning by analogy added. But for now, let’s focus on its use of a legal rule and explanation of that rule.
(Don’t worry if you don’t understand the format of legal citations. You will learn about that in another course. For now, just read this example as a good illustration of IRAC writing. References to R indicate citations to particular pages in the record to support a factual statement.)

11.2 Example: IRAC Argument

ISSUE: Does the evidence genuine issues of material fact as to whether the defendant guard, Officer Rath, knew that the plaintiff prisoner, Mr. Fox, was at a substantial risk of serious harm from other inmates, particularly Mr. Ball?

RULE: Prison officials meet the knowledge prong of a deliberate indifference claim when they are subjectively aware of a substantial risk of serious harm to prisoners. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994). Although an official “must be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference,” a claimant can demonstrate that an official had knowledge if a risk is obvious. Id., at 837, 844. An obvious risk can be shown by evidence that prison assaults were “longstanding, pervasive, well-documented, or expressly noted by prison officials” because these circumstances suggest an official must have known. Id., at 842-43.

MORE RULE with EXPLANATION: Whether a prison official is subjectively aware of a substantial risk of serious harm “is a question of fact subject to demonstration in the usual ways, including inference from circumstantial evidence.” Id., at 842. Advance notice is not necessary to establish knowledge if a prisoner falls into a victim-prone category. Id., at 843; Corbett v. Kelly, No. 97-CV-0682 E, 2000 WL 1335749, at *4 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 13, 2000). Thus, a prison official may be put on notice that a prisoner faces a substantial risk of serious harm if there is a similar history of violence at the prison. One circumstance that can give rise to knowledge of an obvious risk is if there are classes of victim-prone prisoners whom officials know are more susceptible to attack. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 843.

APPLICATION: Examining the evidence in the light most favorable to Fox raises the inference that Rath knew that Fox was at a substantial risk of serious harm for two reasons. First, Rath knew that as a convicted sex offender Fox was victim-prone. After all, Rath admitted he knew that the DOJ found sex offenders at the Holding Center were targeted, and he knew that Fox was a convicted sex offender. (R.30).
Second, Rath knew about Ball’s well-documented history of violent behavior towards sex offenders. (R.30). Rath also knew that Ball was a security risk who was ordered to stay away from other prisoners. (R.32). Ball had a well-documented history of violent offenses on his intake sheet, including an assault on a convicted sex offender at the Holding Center. (R.29). Because Ball had assaulted another prisoner earlier in the same day he assaulted Fox, he was classified as a security risk and ordered not to comingle with other prisoners (R.53, 55). Rath heard Ball threaten that prisoner hours before he assaulted Fox. (R.33). And Rath admitted he had read both Ball’s Intake Sheet and the order that classified Ball as a security risk. (R.29, 53, 56).

Indeed, Ball’s taunting of Fox as a “pervert” while he beat and kicked Fox (R.34) underscores that a jury could rationally infer that Rath was on notice that Fox faced a substantial risk of harm.

CONCLUSION: These facts all would allow a jury to draw the reasonable inference that Rath knew Fox was at risk of harm. Thus, there are genuine questions of material fact, making summary judgment inappropriate. The same IRAC form would apply to objective writing.
That example was of a legal argument—the prisoner is seeking to persuade the court that his civil rights case should not be thrown out. The form of the reasoning would be the same in an objective analysis, such as in a predictive memorandum. See the examples of predictive memoranda in this resource. If you were to review those examples, would you be able to spot the I, the R, the A and the C? As with the argument above, where would you put which letter and why?

Activity 11.2 Scrambled IRAC Activities

Test your understanding of IRAC by reordering the numbered passages into a coherent IRAC. Why is the order you put them in the right one to make a coherent IRAC?

1) I have been asked to analyze whether the Phoenix Club will likely be held liable for Peterson’s injuries caused by Dixon’s operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated.

2) Dixon’s statement establishes that in the hour before he arrived at the club, he had drunk two 16-ounce alcoholic energy drinks and all but one “swig” of a 750-ml “fifth” of 80-proof bourbon.

3) A liquor licensee “is under a duty, imposed both by common law principles and statute, to exercise affirmative, reasonable care in serving intoxicants to patrons who might later injure themselves or an innocent third party, whether on or off the premises.” Patterson v. Thunder Pass, Inc., 214 Ariz. 435, 438 (App. 2007).

4) In Patterson, a bar served alcohol to an obviously intoxicated patron. 214 Ariz. at 436. But when the patron tried to leave, a bar employee took her car keys, drove her home in another vehicle, returned her key, and returned to the bar. Id. Unbeknownst to bar employees, the patron walked back to the bar parking lot, retrieved her car, and caused a collision. Id.

5) “Obviously intoxicated” means “inebriated to such an extent that a person’s physical faculties are substantially impaired and the impairment is shown by significantly uncoordinated physical action or significant physical dysfunction that would have been obvious to a reasonable person.” A.R.S. § 4-311(D).

6) Arizona’s “dram shop” statute, A.R.S. § 4-311(A), provides that a licensee is liable for property damage or personal injuries if the licensee sold liquor to an obviously intoxicated person and that person’s consumption of the liquor proximately caused the plaintiff’s injury.

7) The Patterson court affirmed a summary judgment for the bar because the bar’s employees “fulfilled their legal duty of affirmative, reasonable care to [the patron] and the public by separating [the patron] from her vehicle and arranging for, as well as subsequently providing, the safe transportation of [the patron] to her residence.” Id. at 439.

8) Thus, in light of all the evidence, the Phoenix Club will likely be held liable for Peterson’s injuries.

9) Given the three-hour period that Dixon was at the club, his pre-arrival consumption of alcohol, the twelve beers he consumed while at the club, and the fact that he left the club without interference from employees, a jury would likely find that Dixon was obviously intoxicated at the club, but was served alcohol anyway and that the club did nothing to keep Dixon from causing injury to others in his intoxicated state.