C-R-A-C: (Almost) Easy as 1-2-3 - Washington State Bar News

COLUMN > Write to Counsel

BY AMANDA K. STEPHEN

Legal analysis is the most difficult part of legal writing because clearly explaining the law and how it applies to the facts is hard. Fortunately, a simple structure called CRAC can make legal analysis easier to write and easier to read.

CRAC (often pronounced “see-rack”) is a reliable method for organizing legal analysis that works in most types of legal writing, including both objective memos and persuasive briefs. This article explains what CRAC is, why it works, how to use it effectively, and when (and why) you might deviate.

What Is CRAC?

CRAC is to legal analysis what counting is to math: It’s often one of the first things you learn, but it never stops being useful. Each part of the formula serves a specific purpose. Here’s how it breaks down:

Conclusion: Tells the reader your answer (your prediction or argued outcome) for the legal issue.
Rule: Describes the relevant law, including both the black-letter rules and the most analogous cases.
Application: Applies the relevant law to the facts of your case through a plain language application of the black-letter rules and/or an analogy to the cases.
Conclusion: Restates the answer, now supported by your application.

You may have learned about CRAC (or perhaps its parent IRAC) in your first year of law school, where it is commonly used to structure exam answers. At the University of Washington School of Law, we also teach CRAC as a foundational form of legal analysis in our legal analysis, research, and writing curriculum because it is a simple and effective default structure in most contexts.

Several closely related organizational structures exist.¹ For example, CREAC is almost identical to CRAC. CREAC stands for Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, Conclusion. In this structure, the R is only the black-letter rules, and the E is the description of cases that explain those rules (in CRAC, the “R” encompasses both the rules and case descriptions). Similarly, IRAC stands for Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion. I prefer CRAC over IRAC because beginning with the conclusion follows a key principle of reader-centered legal writing: don’t make the reader wait for the answer.²

Regardless of the variation, the basic structure remains the same. First describe the relevant law, then apply it to the facts.

Why Does CRAC Work?

One reason CRAC works well is that it helps readers understand the legal framework before asking them to evaluate the facts.

Think about preparing for a hike. Before setting out on the trail, most hikers take a moment to look at a map. The map helps them understand where the trail begins, where it leads, and what terrain they might encounter. Once you start walking, you have a sense of direction and understand what you will see along the way.

Legal analysis is often the same. When writers begin by explaining the rules and cases first, they give the reader a map of the legal landscape. With that map in mind, the reader can more easily understand how the facts fit into the relevant law in the application and why the conclusion flows from it.

CRAC has an additional advantage: it reflects a structure familiar to many lawyers. Lawyers are trained to think in terms of rules and applications, and many judicial opinions follow a similar pattern. As a result, lawyer-readers often recognize the structure immediately and can follow the analysis more easily.

Using CRAC Effectively

If you want to incorporate CRAC into your legal writing, these tips can help.

Use as many paragraphs as you need. CRAC and IRAC are sometimes introduced to law students as single paragraph formulas. But in real legal writing, each component of CRAC can span multiple paragraphs. While the first and final Conclusions in CRAC might be a single sentence each, the Rule and Application may require several paragraphs, especially when multiple rules or cases are relevant. CRAC’s benefit is in the order of the information, not the number of paragraphs, so don’t assume CRAC “doesn’t fit” just because you have a longer analysis.

Give each legal issue its own CRAC. In a memo or brief that is divided into subsections by issue, give each issue (and each sub-issue) its own CRAC. Trying to figure out if you should break a section into subsections? Only do so if you have distinct law and facts that you could include in each subsection. If you just plan to apply the same law to different facts, keep it as a single section. If you have discrete law and facts for each, break it into subsections with individual CRACs.

Follow the formula. CRAC is reader-friendly because it is predictable. Some writers alternate rules and applications, one at a time: describe a rule, apply it; introduce a case, compare the case; then repeat with another rule or case. I like to call this a CRARARAC structure. This might seem logical to the writer, but it can leave the reader wondering, “Is there more law to come, or are we just applying it now?” By contrast, presenting all of the Rules together before turning to the Application helps the reader see the entire legal framework before diving into the facts. As with the trail map, seeing the whole landscape first can make the journey easier to follow.

CRAC is a tool, not a rule. Even though my last advice was “follow the formula,” there are times it can make sense to deviate. For example, in briefs to the court lawyers often use persuasive headings that already state the conclusion for a particular issue. In that situation, repeating the same conclusion in the first sentence of the section is redundant. The heading can effectively serve as the initial Conclusion, allowing the text to move directly into the Rules. Similarly, good legal writers often start their Application with a transition and topic sentence that reminds the reader of the conclusion (example: “Here, the release provision is sufficiently conspicuous for two reasons.”). In that case, a final Conclusion may feel repetitive and you could omit it, especially if your Application is short. Finally, when writing briefs or motions, there may be persuasive value in using a CRARARAC structure in order to lead the reader to your desired outcome through a deliberate piecing out of Rules and Application. In that case, you might choose not to strictly follow CRAC. But for those who like to keep it simple or are new to legal writing, CRAC almost always works as a default organizational structure.

CRAC’s Limits (and Why the Default Still Helps)

Although CRAC makes a great default structure for legal analysis, it has faced criticism over the years. Some academics have pointed out that many well-respected legal writers and jurists do not use it at all and that lawyers would be better off using good judicial opinions as their model for legal writing rather than a formula.³ Others have bemoaned the structure’s focus on logic and rules over narrative and legal storytelling, arguing that the structure fails to center the people at the heart of all legal issues.⁴ Others still believe that it can oversimplify a complex analysis that requires more nuance because it does not clearly account for facts, rule synthesis, policy considerations, or counter-arguments.⁵ This final critique is easily countered; the writer can include the facts in a separate section of the document and use CRAC only for the discussion or argument section, rule synthesis can be part of the Rules, and policy arguments and counterarguments can be addressed in the Application.

More recently, some scholars have argued that CRAC may reproduce existing hierarchies and biases in the legal system by presenting the law as neutral and objective, when that premise is often contestable.⁶ To avoid suppressing narrative, contextual, or community-based modes of reasoning, Professor Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb advocates using other non-Western rhetorical approaches in legal analysis.⁷

These critiques are worth taking seriously. But they do not eliminate CRAC’s value as a tool, especially when your immediate problem is clarity. CRAC offers a familiar structure that helps writers organize complex reasoning and helps readers follow it. When legal analysis feels difficult to explain (or difficult to read), returning to a clear structure often improves both the writer’s thinking and the reader’s understanding.

The next time you find yourself struggling to organize a tricky analysis, consider starting with CRAC. Sometimes a basic structure is exactly what you need to make legal analysis almost as easy as 1-2-3.

ASK US > If you have a question about legal writing that you’d like to see addressed in a future “Write to Counsel” column by UW Law writing faculty, please submit it to wabarnews@wsba.org, with the subject line “Write to Counsel.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda K. Stephen is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington School of Law, where she teaches first-year legal analysis, research, and writing.

NOTES

1. For a more expansive menu of alternatives to CRAC, see Tracy Turner, “Finding Consensus in Legal Writing Discourse Regarding Organizational Structure: A Review and Analysis of the Use of Irac and Its Progenies,” 9 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JALWD 351, 357 (2012).

2. See Bryan A. Garner, Garner on Language and Writing 402 (American Bar Association 2008) (explaining that IRAC is not useful because “it deprives the busy reader of an up-front summary”).

3. Marion W. Benfield Jr., “Thoughts on IRAC,” 10 The Second Draft (newsltr. of the Leg. Writing Inst.) 16, 17 (Nov. 1995), available at https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=facschol [https://perma.cc/3AE4-JGNW].

4. Laura P. Graham, “Why-Rac? Revisiting the Traditional Paradigm for Writing About Legal Analysis,” 63 U. Kan. L. Rev. 681, 693-95 (2015).

5. Garner, supra note 2, at 403; Ellen Lewis Rice et al., “IRAC, the Law Student’s Friend or Foe: An Informal Perspective,” 10 The Second Draft (newsltr. of the Leg. Writing Inst.) 13 (Nov. 1995), available at https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=facschol [https://perma.cc/3AE4-JGNW].

6. Elizabeth Berenguer, et al., “Gut Renovations: Using Critical and Comparative Rhetoric to Remodel How the Law Addresses Privilege and Power,” 23 Harv. Latinx L. Rev. 205, 205-06 (Fall 2020).

7. See Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, “Still Writing at the Master’s Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric in Legal Writing for a ‘Woke’ Legal Academy,” 21 The Scholar 255, 272-87 (2019).