Dear 1L, Pretend your professor knows NOTHING about your Memo.
Dear 1L, Pretend your professor knows NOTHING about your Memo.
—She doesn’t know any of the facts in the hypothetical.
—He doesn’t know any of the cases you’ve found in your research.
—They don’t know any of the legal principles you’ve found for your analysis.
NOTHING.
Your professor is just some random lawyer who happens to pick up your memo to read.
Could that random lawyer follow your memo?
The answer needs to be “yes.”
So you need to spell things out.
Here’s what I mean by that:
👉 In terms of FACTS, put every single fact that matters in your Facts section. Don’t paraphrase. Describe what happened.
—Remember, your reader knows nothing about your case.
Can they follow your facts? Can they visualize what happened as well as you can now do? Those are the questions you want to be answering “yes” to.
(Also, you aren’t allowed to bring up a fact in your Discussion section if it wasn’t in the Facts section, so this rule is important for multiple reasons.)
👉 In terms of the “E” in CREAC, describe each of the example cases completely, including every fact that matters.
—Remember, your reader has read none of the example cases.
Can they visualize what happened in the example case as well as you can? Can they feel confident in your description so they don’t have to go read the case on their own to understand it? Answer “yes” to those questions.
(Also, you can’t later argue about a fact from an example case unless you’ve already told the reader what that fact is earlier.)
👉 In terms of the “A” in CREAC, you need to compare or contrast the specific facts of your hypo with the specific facts of the example cases you have already described. Don’t generalize; compare hypo facts directly to case facts.
Spell out how each example case is similar to or different from your hypo.
RECAP:
Your professor is just a random lawyer who picks up your memo to read.
Spell it out so they can follow you.
Sending you good luck and godspeed. This legal-writing process is long and agonizingly hard, I know. Stay the course. You can do this.
💌 Amanda
#Dear1L