7.6 The Main Part: IRAC and IAAC

Everybody Knows IRAC...

... but not everybody uses it. Why would that be?

As a reminder, IRAC is the acronym for

• Issue
• Rule
• Analysis
• Conclusion

and is recommended to law students as a structure for the discussion of a legal problem. For example, the Issue could be whether the owner of a dog has to pay for the injury of a person who was teasing the dog and got bitten. The Rule would probably have to be found in dog-bite statues, as interpreted by case-law. The Analysis would then apply the Rule to the facts of the present case. Finally, the Conclusions would summarize the outcome.

Although it may seem basic and sometimes even primitive, the IRAC approach is a good way of structuring an argument. The alternative is usually a less structured brief that is more in line with an equity argument. If you catch yourself writing sentences including "I think ... we should ... maybe ... we could ... it seems reasonable ... alternatively the plaintiff could also try ...", you have a problem with your legal writing!

First, if there are rules that govern an issue, you have to find them and apply them. If there are rules, a judge won't be much interested in what you think or feel or what might seem fair.

Second, the style excerpted above does not exactly sound like you are convinced by your own analysis and outcome. How do you expect to be persuasive if you are yourself not persuaded?

There are no good reasons for discarding the IRAC approach that works well for legal briefs when we do academic writing!

The main difference is that in our academic writing, we address, by definition, a problem that does not have a good solution under current rules (otherwise it would not be a problem). However,

• you still have an Issue, otherwise you would not be writing the paper,
• you may still have some Rules, although you would have to show that they don't apply or don't fit (well) or don't provide good (enough) solutions,
• you still have to Analyze, for example why the established rules should not be applied because they don't fit or don't provide good solutions, what alternatives have already been attempted here or elsewhere and why that did not work much better either, what other proposals have already been made to address the problem and why they won't fully resolve the Issue either, and which innovative proposals you would like to make and why they should work better than any previous attempts or proposals, and finally
• you still need to Conclude to drive your point home and provide the solution to the Issue and the confirmation of the Thesis Statement in the Introduction.

If it makes you feel better, you can sometimes substitute the formula of IRAC with an IAAC:

• Issue
• Argument(s)
• Analysis
• Conclusions

Naturally, a complex paper like a final thesis may have to do this for more than one issue or sub-issue...