How to Write a Case Memo: Sections, Discussion, and Tone

To write a case memo, build it in six sections — heading, question presented, brief answer, statement of facts, discussion, and conclusion — and run each legal issue in the discussion through an IRAC-style framework that states the rule, applies it to your facts, and predicts how a court would likely rule. A case memo is an internal document that objectively analyzes a legal question for a supervising attorney or colleague. Unlike a brief filed with a court, it doesn’t argue for one side. Its job is prediction, and the reader will make real decisions based on your analysis, often without time to double-check your work.¹

The Six Sections at a Glance

Most case memos follow the same structure, and deviating without good reason will slow down any attorney who reads your work:

Heading (caption): recipient, author, date, and subject matter.
Question Presented: the specific legal issue framed as a single, answerable question.
Brief Answer: a direct yes-or-no response with a short explanation.
Statement of Facts: the factual background, laid out objectively.
Discussion: the full legal analysis, applying rules to facts.
Conclusion: a summary of the analysis, and where appropriate, recommended next steps.

The Discussion is by far the longest section. Everything else should be concise enough that a busy attorney can read it in a few minutes and understand your bottom line before diving into the full analysis.¹

Heading and Question Presented

Heading

Center “MEMORANDUM” at the top of the first page, then list four fields: “TO” (the person who assigned the research), “FROM” (your name), “DATE” (the date you submit the memo), and “RE” (the client’s name and a brief description of the subject matter). Keep the “RE” line short and specific enough that the attorney can find this memo again months later when the issue resurfaces.¹

Question Presented

The Question Presented is the single most important sentence in the memo because it tells the reader exactly what legal territory you’ve covered and what you haven’t. A good one weaves together three ingredients: the governing law, the legal question, and the key facts of your case.

Two standard formats handle this well. The “Under/Does/When” format reads: “Under [governing law], does [legal question] when [key facts]?” The “Whether” format reads: “Whether [legal question] under [governing law] when [key facts].” Both produce the same result. Pick whichever feels more natural for the issue at hand, and make sure the question can be answered yes or no.²

Don’t embed your legal conclusion in the question (that’s the Brief Answer’s job), don’t make it so broad that it could describe a hundred different cases, and don’t let it balloon into a paragraph. If you can’t fit it into one or two sentences, the issue probably needs to be split into sub-questions.³

Brief Answer

Start with a clear position: yes, no, or probably yes/probably no. Follow with a “because” clause that states the controlling rule and briefly explains how it applies to your facts. The whole thing should run about three to five sentences. Think of the Brief Answer as a self-contained summary that could stand on its own if the reader never made it to the Discussion.¹

A common mistake is hedging so much that the answer doesn’t actually answer the question. “It depends on the facts” is not an answer. If the analysis genuinely could go either way, say “Probably yes” or “Probably no” and explain which facts would tip the balance. The supervising attorney needs your best prediction, not a restatement of the uncertainty they already knew about.

Statement of Facts

The Statement of Facts is a neutral narrative of the events that gave rise to the legal issue. Every fact you mention in the Discussion needs to appear here first, and every fact you include here should be relevant to the legal analysis. If a detail doesn’t affect the outcome, cut it.

Organize the facts chronologically when the timeline matters, thematically when it doesn’t, or some combination of both. Resist the temptation to shade the narrative toward your predicted outcome. You’re writing for a colleague who needs an honest picture so they can make strategic decisions. If a fact hurts the client’s position, include it anyway and let the Discussion deal with the implications.³

Avoid legal conclusions disguised as facts. “The defendant was negligent” is a conclusion. “The defendant drove through a red light at 50 miles per hour” is a fact. The difference is that facts describe what happened, while conclusions describe the legal significance of what happened. Save the legal significance for the Discussion.¹

Building the Discussion

The Discussion is where the real work happens. It uses an analytical framework to walk through each legal issue step by step. Three acronyms dominate legal writing instruction, and they all follow the same basic logic: state the legal issue, lay out the rule, apply it to your facts, and reach a conclusion. The differences are mostly about where you put the conclusion and how much space you give to explaining the rule.

IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion): open by identifying the legal question, state the governing rule, apply it, and conclude. Works well for simple, single-element issues.
CRAC (Conclusion, Rule, Application, Conclusion): lead with your conclusion, walk through the rule and application, and restate the conclusion at the end. The reader knows where you’re headed from the first sentence.
CREAC (Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, Conclusion): adds a dedicated explanation step between the rule and the application, where you discuss how courts have interpreted the rule in prior cases.

CREAC is the most common choice for complex issues because the explanation section forces you to show your work. When a rule has been interpreted differently by various courts, the reader needs to see those cases before your application will make sense. For straightforward issues where the rule is well-settled, IRAC or CRAC keeps things lean.⁴ Regardless of which acronym you use, every discrete legal issue gets its own complete cycle under its own sub-heading.⁵

Open With a Roadmap

Start the Discussion with a brief roadmap paragraph that tells the reader what issues you’ll address and in what order. If one issue is a threshold question that must be resolved before the others matter, address it first. Otherwise, lead with your strongest analysis. The roadmap is a table of contents in prose form that lets the attorney jump to the section they care about most.

State and Synthesize the Rule

Each issue starts with a clear statement of the governing rule, citing the relevant statute or case. When the rule comes from a single source, this is straightforward. When it comes from multiple court decisions, synthesize those cases into a single, coherent statement of the rule rather than listing them one by one.

Rule synthesis means combining related holdings into one general principle. If three cases each address a different aspect of the same legal test, distill them into a unified rule statement that covers all three. Look for patterns in how courts have weighed similar factors, and present the rule as a cohesive framework rather than a string of case summaries.⁶

Structure the rule section like a funnel: start with the broadest governing principle, then narrow to specific elements, factors, or exceptions. Follow the hierarchy of authority: constitutional provisions first, then statutes, regulations, and finally case law.⁵

Explain How Courts Have Applied the Rule

If you’re using CREAC, the explanation section comes next. Here you discuss the cases you synthesized in the rule section, showing the reader how courts have actually applied the rule to specific facts. Focus on the cases most factually similar to yours, whether favorable or unfavorable. For each case, explain the relevant facts, the court’s reasoning, and the outcome. This gives the reader a concrete sense of where the line sits before you apply the rule to your own facts.

Apply the Rule to Your Facts

The application section is where most memo writers either shine or fall apart. Match each element or factor from the rule to specific facts from your case, using the word “because” to make the connection explicit. Don’t just assert that a factor is met. Explain why.

The most powerful tool here is case comparison. When a prior case reached a favorable outcome on similar facts, draw the analogy: explain which facts are shared and why they should lead to the same result. When a prior case reached an unfavorable outcome, distinguish it: identify the factual differences and explain why they matter. Engage with specific facts from both your case and the precedent. Abstract arguments about what the law “should” do are not application.

This is where beginners get lazy. They state the rule, then jump to the conclusion without actually showing the connection between the facts and the law. If your application paragraph doesn’t reference specific facts from the Statement of Facts and specific holdings from your rule section, it’s not doing its job.⁴

Address Counterarguments

Because a case memo predicts how a court would rule, deal honestly with arguments that cut against your conclusion. Identify the strongest counterarguments the opposing side would raise and explain why they don’t change the outcome, or acknowledge that they might. A memo that ignores unfavorable authority will get the attorney blindsided in court, which is far worse than delivering an uncertain prediction.

When dealing with unfavorable case law, look for a common thread you can use to distinguish the cases as a group rather than picking them apart one by one. If the opposing cases all involved a factual circumstance your case doesn’t share, point that out once and move on. Spending too much time on unfavorable precedent lends it more weight than it deserves.¹

Conclusion

The Conclusion looks similar to the Brief Answer but serves a different purpose. The Brief Answer gives the reader a quick prediction before they’ve read the analysis. The Conclusion summarizes the reasoning they just finished reading. Don’t copy the Brief Answer and paste it here.

A good Conclusion restates your answer to the Question Presented, hits the key points of your analysis, and where appropriate, recommends next steps. Those next steps might include further research on a related issue, a suggested course of action for the client, or a flag that certain facts need to be confirmed before the analysis is final. Don’t introduce new information or arguments that weren’t already covered in the Discussion.⁷

Handling a Multi-Issue Memo

When a memo involves more than one legal issue, each issue should have its own Question Presented, its own Brief Answer, and its own sub-section within the Discussion. The order should be consistent throughout: if you list Issue A before Issue B in the Questions Presented, address them in the same order in the Brief Answers and the Discussion.⁸

If one issue is a threshold question, meaning the other issues don’t matter unless the threshold is met, address it first. If the first question is whether a statute applies to your client at all and the second is whether the client violated that statute, you have to resolve applicability before the violation analysis matters. When no threshold issue exists, lead with the issue where your analysis is strongest.

Keep the Tone Objective

The hardest adjustment for anyone who has written briefs or persuasive essays is dialing back the advocacy. A case memo is predictive, not persuasive. You’re predicting how a court would rule, not arguing for how it should rule. That distinction affects everything from word choice to how you present unfavorable facts.

In practice, objectivity means presenting the legal landscape honestly, including the parts that hurt your client. If a key case goes the other way, say so and explain why it might or might not control. If the facts are disputed, present both versions and analyze each. Avoid language that signals a preference: “clearly,” “obviously,” and “undoubtedly” have no place in a memo. If the answer really were that clear, the attorney wouldn’t need a memo.¹

Final Review Before It Leaves Your Desk

The first pass should focus on substance. Check that every legal conclusion in the Discussion is supported by a cited authority. Verify that every fact in the Discussion appears in the Statement of Facts, and that the Statement of Facts doesn’t contain stray details that never come up in the analysis. If you find orphan facts or unsupported conclusions, something is missing from either the facts or the analysis.

Then check alignment across sections. Does the Question Presented accurately describe what the Discussion actually analyzes, or did the analysis drift during drafting? Does the Conclusion match the Brief Answer, or did your prediction change as you worked through the cases? These problems happen constantly and are invisible to the writer who’s been staring at the same memo for hours. A colleague’s confusion will show you exactly where the gaps are.

Citation errors destroy credibility faster than almost anything else. Confirm that every case you cite exists, says what you claim it says, and hasn’t been overruled or significantly limited. Check that every statute is current and that you’ve cited the correct subsection. Pin-point citations to the specific page matter: a citation that drops the reader into a forty-page opinion without a page number is barely better than no citation at all.

If you used AI tools at any stage of research or drafting, treat every AI-generated citation as unverified until you’ve confirmed it in a legal database. Fabricated citations remain a well-documented risk with AI tools, and courts have sanctioned attorneys for filing briefs that relied on cases that didn’t exist. Manually verify that each cited case, statute, and regulation is real and current before the memo leaves your desk.⁹

1
CUNY School of Law. Drafting a Law Office Memorandum
2
The George Washington University Law School. Persuasive Issue Statements
3
Columbia Law School. Memo Writing Checklist
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Columbia Law School. Organizing a Legal Discussion
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Columbia Law School. Organizing a Legal Discussion: IRAC / CRAC / CREAC
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UC Berkeley School of Law. A Quick Guide to Rule Synthesis
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The George Washington University Law School. Writing an Effective Conclusion
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Georgetown Law. Tips for Effective Organization
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American Bar Association. A Practical Checklist for Using AI Responsibly in Your Law Firm