in many respects this lesson is a direct continuation of the previous one because we've talked about the parts of a legal memorandum and we haven't really gone into detail on the iraq method which is the subject of this particular lesson and here we want to explore this organizational method and see what its constituent parts are now iraq you should know stands for issue rule application and conclusion and we're going to spend a little bit of time figuring out what each of these things mean but what you should know for present purposes is that the irac are effectively the layers of the lasagna that we discussed in the previous lesson a well-organized and well analyzed discussion of a legal issue when the iraq form is used properly it should come out just right like a good lasagna and of course we saw the bad methods where analysis is half baked maybe we don't fully go through each of the pieces of the method or maybe we don't go through them in the proper order and we end up with lasagna in a blender so the point of keeping on task with a memorandum and for recognizing the parts when you're reading one perhaps that an attorney has put together is understanding the iraq method so let's go through those parts we begin with i the issue now in a memorandum the opening issue statement is often in the form of a thesis statement and things to look for in this opening paragraph is something that will predict a result in the legal writer's case whatever the lawyer is writing about usually a memorandum will have a predicted outcome here's the result that the law will require this opening statement on the issue will also show at least in brief what rule we're dealing with what piece out of the entire fabric of the law is involved here so we're going to summarize an aspect of the rule that is key to this case that's also going to show up in the statement of the issue and since we've made a prediction on how the issue will be resolved this opening paragraph will also often briefly summarize the factual reasoning that supports the prediction think of it this way an issue statement in a section of a discussion memo will contain a sketch of the entirety of the content in that particular section it's a little bit of a road map and it's very useful in legal writing and frankly in legal reading when you're trying to regain the legal information on the other end after the issue we get to the rule statement now i've broken the r out here into two parts one of which the rule statement is a simple statement of the relatively undisputed black letter rule and by black letter rule i simply mean this is the text of the rule that everyone pretty much agrees on in substance now that's easy if there's a statute involved you just quote the statute because the wording is given to you a common law rule may have some slight variations from court to court but for the most part there is a statement that all sides on the issue could agree with and that's going to be in the rule statement now we don't end the rule statement there because oftentimes the rule has been elaborated upon and broken down a bit further by later cases so if there's an elaboration on the rule we would also want to include that in a rule statement paragraph what we will not include in this abstract statement however is any description of the facts of previous cases when i say abstract that's what i mean don't talk about the facts the previous cases just tell me what the rule is tell me what the rule is and we'll get into what it means late in a bit just get to the text of it so we're also not going to have any description of the facts of the writer's case that is whatever the case the attorney might be working on just like leaving out the previous case facts keeps our rule statement abstract so does leaving out the present case facts they'll show up soon enough in another part of the memorandum finally the form of a rule statement an abstract rule statement typically involves present tense verbs to state the rule because a rule exists in the here and the now even when we talk about what it has done in the past since our concern is about the future you could say we need it halfway and describe the rule in present tense terms now the second part of the rule is the rule explanation so we could break this down into r1 and r2 what happens in the explanation this is where we describe the facts of the previous cases or maybe there are some other sources in a regulatory environment and in this situation we actually will use past tense verbs why is that we'll use past tense verbs because we're talking about real facts stuff that happened in the past that we're relying on here in understanding the case now the key facts that are going to make their way into a rule explanation are going to typically fall into two categories first the facts are legally relevant to the issue that's at hand we're not trying to tell the story of everything that happened in the case but there are some facts that are absolutely crucial to the analysis because they're the ones on which the court based its decision having said that there's a second category of facts and those are ones that are contextually necessary what do i mean by contextually necessary those are the facts that without which those basics like who's the party involved what did the party do what actions uh were happening between the two sides some things that without which the legally relevant facts won't make any sense we've got to put the story in at least basic context in order to understand what the court did in a particular rule importantly these explanation paragraphs are not a series of case briefs we're not trying to tell the complete story of an entire case why aren't we telling the story of the whole case because honestly we don't care about the whole case all we care about is the pieces and parts of the case that mattered for the legal issue that we are exploring in the memorandum so that's what happens in rule explanation the rule explanation will often have a bit of a format in which this which the paragraph is written and one of the things i like to recommend when i'm teaching students who are trying to become lawyers is that they use the first sentence of their explanation paragraph to state a rule principle and that's just something that's a piece of the rule or an aspect of the rule that's going to end up being important to the analysis so it might read something like this texas courts consider the comparative size and physical demeanor of a plaintiff and her alleged captor when evaluating the willful detention element for example and then we would go on this tells us in the context of a larger claim and this is this is a claim for the tort of false imprisonment that we're going to zero in on one element and specifically one aspect of the element which is size and physical demeanor of the parties who are threatening the person who became the plaintiff later on a second example a younger employee with less experience is more likely to be able to prove willful detention than an older and more experienced employee in cuellar for instance and then we go on and talk about facts of quayle so even though we don't necessarily get to the facts of the case in the first sentence the first sentence is definitely setting up that little piece of the story that we're going to want to deal with in the explanation paragraph now after we get past the first sentence the remainder of the paragraph will illustrate the rule principle once we've said that this aspect of the rule is so important well let's say what it means let's show what it means let's see what the rule does when it's gone and runs around in the wild what does it actually do so to do that we tell a bit of a story so that might begin this way for example the plaintiff in black established that she was willfully detained when blah blah blah continue continuing on with the description so we've zeroed in on a piece of the rule then we zero in on a piece of the facts that relate to that part of the rule now i know this sounds a little bit vague as we're describing it at the moment but when you see an actual memorandum it's going to make a lot more sense to you another example of telling a story in contrast the employee in cuellar could not prove willful detention when and that we tell the facts that we're interested in out of the cuellar case so this generally is the structure of rule explanation paragraphs once we get past the explanation we then get to what most would say is the most important part of the memo the application this is where everything comes together and the writer is explaining to the reader why a certain outcome is more likely than the other outcome that's our application of the rule to the present case it is the centerpiece of the discussion everything we've been doing has been to reach these paragraphs of the analysis and notice that the application is the first time since the opening conclusion or issue statement that actually mentions the facts of a client's case we haven't talked about what the client is up to but in application we do talk about those facts that were brought in from the client's case these paragraphs will analogize and distinguish the client's case by analogical reasoning that is direct fact-to-fact comparisons with the cases that had previously been described and explained in the explanation paragraphs so this is really just taking what we started and bringing it to its relevant conclusion because we are applying it to the current case ideally the comparisons we're going to want to make for analogical reasoning purposes will be legally relevant facts in the previous case and in the current case and we want to explicitly tell the reader what the legal significance of the comparison is why do we do that because again the goal of the memorandum is not to make the reader do work you the writer have done the work and so you want to say here's exactly the point i'm trying to get across this isn't a mystery novel we want to make the analysis absolutely clear now application paragraphs tend to have their own structure as well and the first sentence in one of these paragraphs might be what i'll call a predictive assertion about the new case about the client's case and that may read something like this tess williams will be able to prove the willful detention element of her false imprisonment claim because the threat she faced was severe enough to deprive her of her free will that is a nice capstone on a paragraph where we're going to explore the nature of the threat that was made against tess williams who's the client in the present simulation now we can flip that around and talk about it directly in terms of a case so we could have a sentence like this like the employee in black williams can sufficiently prove the factors to show that mega mart and its employees willfully detained her by threat both of these sentences are focusing in on the threat aspect of this element of false imprisonment and we would expect then the factual comparisons to follow up on that there is one special species of application paragraph i should warn you about and that is the counter application sometimes also called counter argument because application although it will spend most of its time on a prediction will also flip the script and look at the case from the other side application should include counter arguments that run against the prediction although we also want to find out why those arguments are not going to win so a good attorney can see both sides of an argument but then would be able to show why one side of a legal argument is stronger than the other side following the application discussion where we're supporting the predictive thesis or what's in our issue statement the legal writer should highlight the prominent arguments or at least the most prominent argument that run against the prediction that he or she has made by putting counter-application into a memorandum what that does is it proves some credibility of the author namely that the author considered the other side of an issue even if and maybe even especially if he or she was not convinced by it where objective legal writers cannot explain the failure of a counter-argument maybe they should switch sides with their prediction and that's one of the things objective reasoning enables you to do you're almost approaching this a little bit like a computer i don't care who wins at least not for this narrow purpose even though you do want your client to win ultimately i want to know how a non-partisan would view this case and that's what counter argument does it shows that the writer looked at the case from both sides and so we have application that runs both directions it's important to signal when moving from the main application into counter application how do we know that the reader is now talking about the other side that can be really confusing if you don't see it coming well some of the transition language will often involve the word argument or argue itself for example megamart may argue that its threat merely involves calling the police and that such an action is insufficient to support willful detention and if you look at the materials on this fact pattern that are in your book you'll see yeah that's that's a decent argument mere threats to call the police are not by themselves a basis for false imprisonment so of course we'd expect megamart to make that argument if they're trying to get out of liability now let's suppose that we predicted tess williams is going to lose her case well in that situation the counter application will be running in favor of the client because the objective prediction was against the client so it might read something like this despite problems with her claim williams can nonetheless argue that the factors of age experience and demeanor support willful detention once again it's recognizing that if we predicted tess williams will lose not everything is working against her let's highlight the strong parts of her case because we may actually have to use those if we're stuck making an argument that we don't think objectively is going to be the best one and attorneys are frequently in such a position the concluding part of iraq is surprise the conclusion and this is a lot like a restatement of the issue paragraph we want to restate the substance of the original thesis paragraph which is the predicted outcome the key rule and some key supporting facts and put that all into a single paragraph at the end which will wrap up all the analysis that has gone on before many new legal writers or people who are new to the genre of legal writing sometimes will rebel against putting this paragraph on the end and they will think wrongly that the concluding paragraph is useless repetition i'm just wasting words why should i do this and the answer that question is although this is repetitive it is not useless a writer is often too close to her work to see how a closing summary aids the reader's understanding this is all about taking the information that's in your head if you're the writer and pouring it into someone else's head as the reader one of the ways to make that more effective is to begin and end with the same point with the middle being the proof information being duplicative and stating it at the beginning and stating the information at the end is not wasted effort so when you see it don't think that that's something the attorney should not have done in fact it is saving time for the reader even by giving the reader a little bit more at least one paragraph more to read and that brings us to the end of this lesson on the iraq organizational method covering issue rule application and conclusion