Legal research memo

Legal writing center  >  for students  >  drafting a law office memorandum  >  sample memodrafting a law office memorandumoffice memo format and explanationstructure for a working draftsample memoadvanced sample memo first draftadvanced sample memo final draftwriter's questions: focusing on your : gaby duane from: clark thomas re: loman's fashions - breach of contract claim (advertising circular) date: april 26, 2002 question presented 1 under new york law, 2 did 3 loman's fashions' description of a designer leather coat in an advertising circular constitute an offer 4 to sell the coat which became a binding contract when the text of the advertisement indicated that the coats were a "manufacturer's closeout" and that the early shopper would be rewarded, and when a shopper signified her intent to purchase the coat according to the advertised terms? The question presented states the question(s) the memo is to address: how does the relevant law apply to the key facts of the research problem? The author of this memo has been careful not to use language that assumes the answer to the legal question it raises. Because that formulation of the question assumes a legal conclusion -- that the conduct at issue meets the requirements of an offer. Rather, reserve your legal conclusions (here, whether or not the advertisement constituted a formal offer) for the short answer section. Here, note how the writer has constructed the question in this memo to alert the reader to the following facts: description of merchandise in an advertising circular, statement in circular that item is a "manufacturer’s closeout," statement in circular indicating that the early shopper will be rewarded. Although the "question presented" section is short, it must (i) provide a concise reference to the legal claim and relevant doctrine and (ii) incorporate the most legally significant facts of your case. A complete and well-balanced question presented is incisive — it immediately gets to the heart of the legal question — and it orients the reader to the factual context. You may not be sure which facts are most legally significant when you first start writing the memo. You would ascertain which facts are legally significant by referring to the factual criteria (based on elements or factors) in the legal authority relevant to the question — e. For this reason, many people do not write the final version of the question presented (or the short answer) until they have almost completed the "discussion" section of the memo.

The facts section contains all the factual premises upon which your subsequent legal analysis is based. Bear in mind that the busy law-trained reader will value conciseness in this section, so try to present only those facts that are legally significant or that are necessary to make the problem clear. At the same time, bear in mind that the office memo should be a stand-alone document that can fully inform any colleague in your law office who may read it; therefore, the facts section should always contain a full and coherent recitation of the relevant facts, whether or not the principal reader of the memo already knows them (unless, of course, you were instructed to do otherwise). In this memo, the writer has addressed the heart of the incident — the advertisement, the sale of the coats, the arrival of the unhappy shopper — in chronological order in the first paragraph; a second paragraph collects relevant background information about the client. In your own memo, you can recount the facts completely chronologically, you can put the most important incidents or facts first, or you can cluster the facts into discrete topics if the facts are complex and if this is the easiest way to understand them. Choose the organizational scheme that you think will make the facts most clear and memorable to the reader. In your fact section, be sure to specify what legal claims are being considered or are being brought, and be sure to describe any legal proceedings that have already taken place. Since memo writing is predictive writing, you should try to maintain an objective and impartial tone as you recount the facts. Rather, the facts section of an office memo should not be written in a tone that conveys a preference for a particular theory of the case, that implicitly advocates for one side in the dispute, or that telegraphs any of the legal conclusions to be drawn in the discussion section. The umbrella section of the discussion introduces or prefaces your first section of in-depth legal analysis; for example, it restates the key facts and issue presented, and introduces the overarching legal rule. To produce an accurate and well-crafted rule statement, you must have a good understanding of the existing legal authority on which your rule statement is based.

If the rule statement serves as the thesis sentence for a longer discussion about a legal rule that has developed over time in a series of cases, the rule proof serves as your explanation and elaboration of that thesis sentence. The use of a counterargument is a good way to convey that the existing legal authority is not clear, unequivocal, or unified when applied to facts like yours. In your application section you may have struggled with areas of uncertainty in the legal doctrine and/or competing policy rationales. As a legal writer, it helps to have an assortment of qualifiers to acknowledge how certain or uncertain you are of the actual judicial outcome. Your conclusion can convey that you are completely confident the court will rule as you predict or that, given the state of the legal authority, the outcome is really a toss-up and could go either way. Keep in mind that the reader will be judging your credibility as a legal thinker based on (among other things) the congruity of your tone with the data at ctive students | take our virtual tour | plan an event at cuny law | human resources | information technology | student handbook | aba required disclosures title ix campus information | notice of non-discrimination | legal notices | cuny copyright | site index | text only view |. Content may not be reproduced without t bono and public ration & ial aid & y experts for media y scholarship square ity legal resource our virtual tours & information ial aid & ulum & course justice canadian legal research and writing   /  writing & analysis  /  preparing a legal ing a legal memorandum. Legal memorandum presents research and analysis and applies the research and analysis to particular facts. The structure and conventions are discussed below, and a sample memorandum is e each legal problem is distinct, no two memoranda will be organised in precisely the same way. Do not slavishly follow the sample memorandum, and do feel free to incorporate your own style where appropriate. The goal of this page is to help you learn about the general structure and components of this form of writing, and apply them to your research assignment in the most effective way for your particular problem.

Legal memorandum is comprised of certain standard elements:Succinct identification of the legal issue(s). Summary of your of relevant sion of the law relevant to the legal issues, and application of that law to the te conclusion that is responsive to the legal of these elements is discussed in greater detail heading should identify the author and recipient of the memorandum, and include the date, client identification, and subject matter. See the sample memorandum for an example of a typical  issues portion of the memorandum is crucial. You must succinctly identify the correct legal issues, within the context of the facts of your case. Include legal elements that are essential to resolution of the more narrow and descriptive your issue statement is, the more effective it will be. Compare these three issue statements, derived from the sample memorandum research problem:Is the security enforceable? Security documents signed and registered using the debtor’s common law name be enforceable against the debtor and the debtor’s creditors if the debtor later changes to using his legal name? Personal property security documents granted in favour of the bank, signed and registered in british columbia using the debtor’s common law name david black, be enforceable against the debtor and the debtor’s creditors now that the debtor has changed to using his legal name david brown? It provides no context for anyone who is not immediately familiar with the case, and does not add value to the memorandum as a precedent for future cases. Just as each legal case is decided within the confines of the facts of that case, a legal memorandum is intended to address the narrow legal issue raised by a particular there is more than one issue to be addressed, list the issues in the order in which you will be discussing them in the the sample memorandum for an example of the issues portion of a legal , you can provide a brief, up-front statement of your conclusion(s). A crisp, clear, responsive answer must be provided as near the beginning of your memorandum as possible.

See the sample memorandum for an example of the short conclusion portion of a legal  facts portion should list the relevant facts on which you have relied in researching and preparing the memorandum. Use definitions to standardize terminology for persons and things that will be referred to frequently in the memorandum. This prevents clutter and inconsistent references to the same your matter relates to litigation, make sure to review the key parts of the procedural history, and note the current stage of  facts portion can either precede or follow the issues section of the memorandum. Alternatively, if the facts portion of the memorandum is quite lengthy, your reader may want to see the issues first. The sample memorandum for an example of the facts portion of a legal are various ways of dealing with conclusions in a legal memorandum:If you follow the model of including your short conclusion early in the memorandum, keep that section extremely brief (three-four sentences, maximum). If your short conclusion and your conclusion are likely to be identical, use format cation / of the hardest parts of writing a legal memorandum is to reach a defensible conclusion when the law is uncertain generally, or as it applies to your facts. Since the purpose of the memorandum is to answer the legal question posed, you cannot simply say that the law is unclear and leave it at that. You have to trust that your research and analytical skills enable you to provide a reasonable some circumstances there may be a practical solution that enables you to avoid confronting the uncertainty in the law. However, usually you have to make a decision about what a court would likely do if faced with your fact ’t hesitate to offer your own opinions, as long as they are well-grounded in the law and to avoid using equivocal language in your memorandum where possible. But also state what you think is the better view or probable outcome, and the client’s chances of success if is and  discussion section is the heart of the memorandum. The discussion section should be broken down into a separate part for each discrete legal issue covered in the memorandum; subheadings are helpful here.

The discussion of each issue should include an introduction, an explanation of the applicable legal rule, an application of the rule to the legal problem, and a conclusion in respect of that issue. The classic formulation for this is known as  first step is to state the legal issue. The issue can also be referred to in the heading for this part of the discussion second step is to determine the applicable legal rule. Depending on the nature of the legal rule, you may need to review the history of the rule and consider the policy rationale for the rule. This section includes analysis of the rule, but does not include application of the rule to your third step is to apply the legal rule to your facts. Don’t be so concerned about advancing a particular position that you forget to consider and weigh the other side(s) of the last step is to state your conclusion on the legal issue being discussed. Although you will include overall conclusions elsewhere in your memorandum, it is also important to reach a conclusion on each legal issue as it is dealt with in need not be applied rigidly as long as all the elements are covered. Your decision about how to divide up the legal issues will influence the way that you apply example, if you are dealing with cases from a number of different jurisdictions you can structure your discussion separately for each jurisdiction, or cover all jurisdictions when you deal with a particular may want to discuss each sub-issue separately. However, if that would result in repetitive discussion of the same cases in different sections of the memo, it might be better to combine your discussion of some of the the sample memorandum for an example of the discussion portion of a legal memorandum may be used to draft a letter to the client or a brief to the court, so it is extremely important to cite all of your sources (and pinpoint to paragraph or page numbers as much as possible). Remember that the ultimate goal of legal citations is to ensure your reader can easily find any of the material you sample memorandum uses in-text citations. It is important to adopt a consistent style throughout your memorandum, rather than switching between in-text citations and may also wish to include hyperlinks in your citations where see also the page dedicated to legal citation.

Note on your memorandum is especially long or complex, you may wish to provide a bibliography at the end, listing all of the authorities you have cited. Note on & resources for legal ing a legal memorandum of decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal on linking -by-step legal research help at each stage of the legal research canadian legal research and writing   /  writing & analysis  /  sample memorandum of memorandum of memorandum is provided for instructional purposes. It is not to be relied on as legal ty documents executed and registered using debtor’s common law individual (the “debtor”) executed security documents on his own behalf using a name which was not his legal name. However, his legal name is david brown, and he has more recently begun using that name instead of david client (the “bank”) is the security holder. The security documents were registered against the debtor’s personal property in british columbia in favour of the bank, with the registration listing the debtor as david bank is now concerned about whether its security is personal property security documents granted in favour of the bank, signed and registered in british columbia using the debtor’s common law name david black, be enforceable against the debtor and the debtor’s creditors now that the debtor has changed to using his legal name david brown? A person’s legal name was the name the person was known by, determined merely as a question of common usage within the community. However, the courts have held that the use of a name different from one’s legal name is still not illegal, so long as there is no intention to defraud or mislead. Privy council considered the effect of signing a deed using a name different from one’s legal name in fung ping shan v. If one used a different name to sign a legal document, one would still be bound under that ng this rule to our facts, the debtor is bound to the bank under the security documents, even though he did not sign them using his legal ulties with the common law rule have arisen in modern times because of registration regimes that are name-dependent. Most of these cases deal with minor differences between the legal name and the registered name, such as an incorrect or missing middle initial, or a misspelled first name. An even smaller body of cases deals with differences in tendency in the more recent cases has been to afford a generous interpretation of the word “name” in the registration requirements, where the legislation does not specify that the name used in the documentation must be the individual’s legal name.

However, this is balanced against the problems caused to third parties trying to search the registry under the legal name and finding no security documentation registered under that leading british columbia case is re lazarchuk (1994), 7 p. 36 (“ppsa”) required that the debtor’s legal, true or right name, as indicated on some official document, should be recorded on the financing statement, and that strict compliance is necessary to preserve the integrity of the registration system under the act. The name act does not appear to require any formal registration of such an election or addition, there does not appear to be anything which invalidates a change of name by common-law even though that change might be an offence under the name powers then reviewed the ppsa and its regulations, and concluded that the references to “name” in that legislation were not restricted to the “legal name” of the debtor:I conclude that the regulations should not be interpreted to deprive the bank of its security in a case of this nature. The alberta court of appeal held that even though registry guidelines published by the attorney general directed that the birth certificate name be used in registering securities, those guidelines did not have binding legal effect. Such an adoption was acknowledged to cause a change of name under the change of name case implies that the only name that is valid for ppsa registration is the name that is the legal name under the change of name act. Where the debtor uses more than one name, then the name to be used for ppsa registration must be the debtor’s legal name. However, if he is using both names, or has abandoned black in favour of brown, then the documentation should be registered in his legal a result of this analysis, the bank should take the following steps to protect its security. Resources for legal ing a legal memorandum of decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal on linking -by-step legal research help at each stage of the legal research canadian legal research and writing   /  writing & analysis  /  sample memorandum of memorandum of memorandum is provided for instructional purposes. Resources for legal ing a legal memorandum of decisis and techniques of legal reasoning and legal on linking -by-step legal research help at each stage of the legal research ch memosbigger margins, smaller point size, tighter line spacingthe prob­lems that afflict research memos also afflict other long doc­u­ments like set­tle­ment agree­ments and contracts. You can adapt this recipe for any of legal-writ­ing teacher in law school required memos to be for­mat­ted using clas­sic type­writer habits—one-inch mar­gins on all sides, 12-point font, dou­ble-spaced lines. Thoughts ch memosbigger margins, smaller point size, tighter line spacingthe prob­lems that afflict research memos also afflict other long doc­u­ments like set­tle­ment agree­ments and contracts.