![]() For guidance, search your firm’s office document management system for previous legal memos. Some topics require only a short summary, while others compel long-form treatment. Remember, legal memo length varies by subject. Throughout, utilize legal memo space wisely. Your legal research should help frame the issue and lead to other relevant materials, including cases and statutes. Use secondary resources to better fill in the main legal topics and issues as they relate to the facts in the legal memo assignment. These identified gaps will inform your fact-finding and research. Identify your audience’s presumed level of knowledge, then the most mission-critical questions to address. Readers like law partners and assigning attorneys will already know general law. However, remember that while you may know little about a topic, the same may not hold true for your audience. Although secondary sources are not binding on courts, meaning courts are not required to follow these sources, they are still helpful tools to use when you know little about a topic. ![]() Secondary sources, such as books, treatises, law reviews, legal analysis publications, and Practical Guidance are a great starting point to assist with your legal memo research. In an open legal memo, you will be tasked with researching relevant primary and secondary resources, such as from national, single, or multiple state entities, as well as appeals circuits, to include in your analysis. ![]() Step 1: Understand the legal issues Review legal memo assignment materials Legal memorandum sample assignmentĪssignment: Prepare an open legal memo on whether, under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, there is personal jurisdiction over a foreign car manufacturer involving a products liability case. Learn the essentials of litigation writing, research, and document review with our Core Litigation Skills Practical Guidance Toolkit, available to Bloomberg Law subscribers. If you tackle your assignment by following the recommended approaches in the legal memo example below, you’ll be more likely to find an appreciative supervising attorney, deliver better work product, cut down on the number of drafts required to arrive at a final product, and, most importantly, please the client. Legal research memos can come in many forms-from broad 50-state surveys to more nuanced research on a particular point of law-but whatever the format, it’s important that you fully understand the task entrusted to you before you start typing. With an impartial advisory tone, you identify next steps and propose a legal strategy to proceed. It predicts how the court will apply the law, and how confident you are in your prediction based on the data. The assigning attorney will likely read this section first. Several paragraphs outline the various legal topics to be addressed in the case and provide an analysis of the legal issues, usually ordered in subsections. Restates the main facts and delineates the overarching legal rule. The facts can be chronological or grouped thematically, whichever format presents the facts in the clearest manner. Statement of factsĪ concise, impartial statement of the facts that captures the heart of the legal matter, as well as current and past legal proceedings related to the issue. Brief answerĪ quick-hit legal prediction to the question presented, based on a short (four to five sentences) explanation that references relevant law and facts. The question presented is specific and impartial and doesn’t assume a legal conclusion. Question presentedĪ brief one-sentence statement that defines how the law applies to the legal question at hand, and the jurisdiction where the matter will be decided. Heading or captionĪ section, titled, “Memorandum,” identifies the recipient (To: _), the author (From: _), the assignment submission date (typically in MMMM DD YYYY format), and subject of the memo (Re: _). Generally, a legal memorandum comprises six sections, with the following information: 1. With proper planning, law firm associates can maximize the odds of favorable reception at the outset.īloomberg Law can help you understand and apply legal issues to your legal memo assignment, so your final product addresses all relevant points right out of the gate. The legal memo is an assignment that law firm associates are frequently asked to provide to senior attorneys.įar too often, however, the assigning attorney takes one look at the result and replies, “I knew this already.” To prevent this outcome, it’s important to write a legal memo with sufficient understanding of audience, scope, purpose, and format. ![]() The legal memo is an objective memorandum that provides you the opportunity to review and research relevant case law, investigate relevant facts using available resources, analyze those facts under that law, and impartially assess the potential outcome of a matter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |