法律文书写作UsingLeglWritingConventions.doc

Using Legal Writing Conventions _________________________________________________________________ IRAC/CRRACC Format Attorneys work to further their clients interests by identifying a problem that the legal system can address, understanding the legal rules and remedies relevant to a clients situation, and using the relevant law to resolve the clients question or problem. When attorneys understand the law, they can help ensure that their clients comply with the law, act in a manner that is protected by law, attain legal remedies, or can be protected from the legal claims of others. Many legal writing tasks — e.g., drafting memoranda, briefs or motions to a court, agreements, or wills — require an attorney to examine whether the client has any legal claims or is vulnerable to legal claims of others. In accomplishing these tasks, the attorney must either predict what a court will do or argue what a court ought to do, given a particular set of facts. Such predictions and arguments reflect the attorneys understanding of the way courts make new legal decisions based on existing legal authority. Typically, lawyers render legal predictions in a law office memorandum. Lawyers argue for a particular outcome, i.e., write with the purpose of persuasion, when their audience is a decision maker having authority over the clients situation. When, as a lawyer (or a law student), you are asked to write an office memo, a brief, or an exam answer, you will be expected to apply legal rules to a specific set of facts to reach a conclusion, to identify the important legal questions, to answer them, and to explain how you arrived at your answers. It is generally accepted that a discussion of the existing law precedes its application to the facts at hand. This may seem counterintuitive to some; after all, a legal thinker must first obtain and process the facts before the relevant legal doctrine can be identified and applied. Nonetheless, from a legally trained readers standpoint, a written