IRAC, CRAC, or CREAC for Law School Essay Exams

Which of the three organisation strategies—IRAC, CRAC, or CREAC—is better for law school exams?

Today I will explain each of these methods, why they are used, and my recommendation for

law school exams.

If you stick around to the end, the bonus legal fact addresses the issue of when husbands

in England sold their wives at auction, with the practice ending only in the 20th century.

Hello lawlings, this is Professor Beau Baez.

The majority of you are familiar with the acronym IRAC, which stands for Issue, Rule, Application or Analysis, and Conclusion on the law school essay test.

The IRAC method developed in the United States in the 1970’s, and has now spread to many

English speaking countries.

With a quick Internet search you will find dozens of variations, such as HIRAC, FIRAC,

CRAB, IPAAC, and on and on.

The two most popular IRAC variants are CRAC and CREAC, which I shall discuss.

in this session.

Before I continue, pay attention to how I keep using the word variety.

These are all variants, but at their core, they are all IRAC.

So let's go on to CRAC with that in mind.

Conclusion is represented by the letter C in CRAC, while the other letters are similar to those in IRAC: Rule,

Application or Analysis, and Conclusion.

So instead of starting with an issue statement, you begin and end with your conclusion.

CRAC shows the reader that you comprehend, according to the method's proponents.

giving the reader assurance that they are on top of the problem from the outset

about to read a good answer.

But that is also it’s flaw—if the grader doesn’t like your conclusion, then it might

be harder to persuade them that you wrote a decent answer.

By the way, for graders that are rushing, like we often see on the bar exam and with

some professors, CRAC might be a more effective method because it can hide a weak answer.

What happens is that the grader sees a good opening because they agree with the conclusion,

and they skim the rest, assuming that if the conclusion is correct then the rest of

the answer must also be correct.

That’s a logical fallacy.

The rushed grader then jumps from conclusion to conclusion, assigning a higher grade because

of the correct opening conclusion in each paragraph.

So if you decide to use CRAC, be careful.

Uuuuum, you do know what I mean by CRAC, right?

Now to CREAC.

The C stands for conclusion, R for Rule, E for Explanation, A for Application or Analysis,

and C once again for conclusion.

I’ve already discussed the problem, at least on a law school exam, of starting with a conclusion.

Let’s looks at E for a moment, as this is the one variation from the CRAC method.

Often times, people will refer to this as Rule-Explanation, as the goal here is to explain

the rule.

Let me provide an example from a negligence essay..

where you state the duty rule as follows: The duty of care

owed by the defendant was to act as a reasonably prudent person under like circumstances.

Most graders view this as correct but not complete.

This is because the rule wasn’t fully explained.

The following few explanatory sentences are needed: The reasonable prudent person is deemed

to have knowledge of those things known to other members in the community.

Also, this person will take precautions to avoid unreasonable risks of injury to others.

This is what is meant by the E in explanation.

A full explanation of the rule.

But in reality, this is what every rule statement should look like when using IRAC.

So the E is nothing more than a reminder that you need a full rule statement, which might

require several sentences to articulate.

On a law school final exam, here is my recommendation.

First, if your professor has recommended a method, go with that approach.

Otherwise, go with IRAC and nested IRAC, which I’ve discussed on other videos.

I recommend IRAC because a law school exam is a form of persuasive writing.

You want to persuade the grader that your position is correct, and explaining along

the way why the other side has the weaker case.

By starting with the issue rather than a conclusion, you have the ability to persuade, to bring

the grader to your way of thinking.

Starting with the conclusion makes your job harder, especially when the grader doesn’t

believe there is much merit to the conclusion you’ve chosen.

So go with IRAC.

Now, for today’s bonus law fact.

It was a sunny day and market was open.

The husband grabbed a halter, which he normally uses for pigs and horses, placed it around

his wife’s neck.

He then tied a rope to it, took her to market, placed her on the post used for selling livestock,

and then offered her for sale.

And this folks, is how the poor used to get a divorce.

For thousands of years, people agreed they wanted to be together and that was that—they

were married.

No need for a religious service or license from the government.

But in 1753, the English Parliament passed the Marriage Act, which required a formal

ceremony to get married.

And with a formal marriage came the need for a formal and expensive divorce—something

the poor couldn’t afford.

Before 1753, when a poor couple decided they didn’t want to remain married, they could

just leave each other and neither the clergy nor the government would know that they had

once been married to each other.

This is why a minister would ask during a wedding ceremony whether anyone knew of a

reason as to why the couple should not be married.

The minister actually wanted to know if one or both people he was marrying had been married

before—he had no way of knowing unless someone in the audience spoke up.

One other thing to understand about marriages before the 20th century is that the woman

was deemed property of her husband.

In his 1753 legal treatise, Sir William Blackstone wrote “the very being, or legal existence

The woman's role in the marriage is suspended, or at the very least merged and absorbed into her husband's role, under whose wing, protection, and cover she executes everything.

So now, back to the sale.

Because women were deemed property of the husband, if she merely left her husband for

someone else, the husband was still liable for his wife’s debts—it didn’t matter

that she was living with another man.

And from the other man’s perspective, he could be sued for stealing the wife and be

thrown into prison for committing adultery.

The common folk then developed this process of wife selling.

After all, if she was property, then she could be sold and the new owner would be liable

for her debts.

And because it was at a public auction, everyone in the community knew the couple were no longer

married.

In almost every reported instance of wife selling, there was another man, most likely

a lover, waiting to buy the woman.

The price was very low, merely to add consideration to the deal to make it a binding contract.

In the event that there was no arrangement for someone to buy the wife, the wife did

have the right to refuse the sale.

In some cases, the wife refused numerous offers until someone she was willing to be with offered

to buy her.

The practice began dying out in the late 19th century, with the last reported sales occurring

in the early 20th century.

Towards the end, the auctions had ended and it became more common to sell wives by deed of

conveyance—a private rather than public affair.