legal memo 法律备忘录(2)

legal memo

for a law-trained reader, it will prevent an unfamiliar reader from questioning your work and wondering why your memo discusses only lower-court cases or secondary sources.

Second, a law-trained reader will have certain expectations about how you should organize and present information. These expectations come from tradition, court practice, legal education methods, and pragmatic needs. Most legal readers are busy, impatient, and skeptical; meeting their core expectations for a memo will make your document seem familiar, efficient, and easy-to-follow. This guide summarizes some of the key expectations of law-trained readers.

Unfamiliar with the law and facts – Legal writers generally assume that their readers know little or nothing about the relevant law or facts and craft their explanations accordingly. Thus, in writing your memo, you should discuss the law and facts as if you were explaining the case to someone new to the area. Also try to make your memo “self-contained,” so the reader does not have to look up your sources separately to understand your explanations. This is especially important if you intend to use your small-section memo as a writing sample in future, because your potential employer will be an unfamiliar legal reader who will judge your work by how clearly you present your information.

Organizing a Memo

Legal readers expect information to be organized in certain ways. Meeting these expectations will avoid confusion and help an unfamiliar reader follow your explanations and reasoning more easily. Formal office memoranda often contain separate sections called Issue, Brief Answer, Facts, and Discussion, but some memos are more informal. Follow your professor’s directions, if any, on which sections to include.

An “Issue” section s tates the question asked by identifying the aspect of law in dispute along with the key facts triggering that question. (See sample memo.) In phrasing the question, try to find a balance between being overly general and overly detailed about the relevant rule and facts. A “Br i ef Answer” section should answer the question asked and briefly summarize your reasoning. The “Facts” section should include only those facts that affect the outcome of your question. It should not repeat every fact in the assignment.

The following advice about organization applies to the Discussion section—the main body of your memo.

Overall organization - Ordinarily, the main body of a memo is organized around rule structures overall, because that is how courts typically organize their analyses. Rules and rule structures can come from statutes, cases, or other types of legal authority, and sometimes the first challenge may be to identify the rule structure itself. A statutory rule may already be organized into elements or conditions that must be met. If not, break down the language of the statute into a logical rule structure yourself. For common-law questions, if a new rule has evolved through a series of cases, the legal writer must put those cases together and describe the resulting “synthesized” rule structure for an unfamiliar reader.

Once you have identified the rule structure, explain it to the reader, and organize your discussion accordingly. For example, if the applicable rule contains a series of elements, readers will expect to see an orderly discussion of those elements (or at least the disputed ones). If a rule requires a balancing of factors, readers will expect a memo to explain that balancing test, to explain the relevant factors, and to evaluate how a court will weigh the disputed factors in the client’s case. Most memos will not discuss all aspects of a rule equally. Instead, the legal reader will expect you to give an overview at the start of your memo discussion and then to focus your attention on whatever aspect of the rule is uncertain or in dispute.

Internal organization –“IRAC” - Within your discussion of rules or rule components, you should organize your information using the so-called “IRAC” order. IRAC stands for (1) I ssue, (2) R ule explanation, (3)A pplication to

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