Exam Technique

How to Answer a Law Problem Question Using IRAC

A sharp, exam-tested guide to IRAC that tells you what to actually write, not just what the letters stand for.

IRAC is one of those things tutors mention in week one and then never quite explain properly. You know the acronym: Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion. What nobody tells you is that the letters are not equal in weight, that most students fail problem questions by doing them in the wrong order, and that the Application section is where marks live or die.

This guide is about what you actually write, section by section, in an exam or assessed coursework.

What IRAC Is Actually Asking You to Do

A problem question gives you a scenario and asks you to advise one or more parties. The examiner is testing whether you can spot the relevant legal issue, state the correct rule with precision, apply that rule to the specific facts, and reach a conclusion. Simple in theory. The failure mode is treating each step as a box to tick rather than as a tool for legal reasoning.

Think of it this way. The Issue tells the reader what legal question is in play. The Rule gives you the legal standard against which the facts will be measured. The Application is where you measure them. The Conclusion is your answer. Cut any one of those and your answer falls apart.

Step One: Spotting the Issue

This is harder than it looks. A well-drafted problem question will contain several overlapping issues, and your first job is to identify each one before you start writing.

Read the scenario twice before you write anything. On the first read, highlight every event that might have legal consequences: a statement made, a product that injures someone, an agreement that might or might not be a contract, a trust that may have been constituted. On the second read, ask who has a potential claim, against whom, and on what legal basis.

Be specific when you state the issue. "Whether there is a duty of care" is too vague. "Whether the defendant manufacturer owed a duty of care to the claimant consumer as the ultimate user of a product, applying the neighbour principle from Donoghue v Stevenson" tells the examiner you know exactly where you are. That specificity earns marks before you have written a single rule.

In a multi-party scenario, work through issues in a logical sequence. If the question involves a road accident, deal with negligence before you touch contributory negligence. If it involves a trust, deal with constitution before you deal with the beneficiary principle. Order matters.

A Quick Checklist for Issue Identification

• Who is the potential claimant and who is the potential defendant?
• What cause of action does the scenario point toward? Name the tort, the vitiating factor, the equitable doctrine.
• What specific element of that cause of action is actually in dispute? Not every element is live. Flag the ones that are.
• Are there any defences or counterclaims hiding in the facts?

Step Two: Stating the Rule

The Rule section is where students who have done the reading reveal themselves. You need to state the legal test accurately, completely, and in your own words where possible.

"There is a duty of care" is not a rule. The rule is the three-stage Caparo test: foreseeability of damage, proximity of relationship, and whether it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty. If the question is about a manufacturer and an end consumer, you should also cite [Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562](https://www.getcaselaw.com/case-library/7c984837-f0b3-4afc-a73f-3ec96f6e4756) as the foundational authority establishing that duty in product liability, because the examiner wants to see that you can locate the rule historically and doctrinally.

State the rule before you touch the facts. This is the discipline IRAC enforces. If you jump to the facts while you are still explaining the rule, you blur the two and your analysis becomes impossible to follow.

For statute-based questions, quote the relevant section accurately and briefly. For common law questions, name the leading case and extract the test in clear propositional form. Some rules come from a single case. Others are built from a line of authority. If the rule has developed over time, a one-sentence overview of that development shows depth: "The test was restated in Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, moving away from the expansionist approach in Anns v Merton and introducing the three-stage framework now applied to novel duty situations."

One thing to avoid: writing a history of every case that has ever touched the area. Select the authority that states the current applicable test. Use secondary cases in the Application step, where they help you argue by analogy.

Step Three: Application (Where the Marks Are)

This is where most students underperform. They state a rule beautifully and then write one sentence of application: "Therefore, on these facts, there is likely a duty of care." That is not application. That is a conclusion pretending to be analysis.

Real application means taking each element of the rule you have stated and testing it against the specific facts of the scenario, using the language of the cases where relevant.

Take a negligence problem. You have stated the Caparo test. Now apply it:

Foreseeability: Was it foreseeable that someone in the claimant's position would suffer this kind of damage? Use the facts. If the defendant is a manufacturer who has bottled a drink and sealed it so the consumer cannot inspect it, foreseeability of harm from a contaminated bottle is not difficult to establish. The court in Donoghue had no trouble with this either.

Proximity: Is the relationship between claimant and defendant close enough? In a product liability scenario, the chain from manufacturer to ultimate consumer is now well-established. In a novel situation, you have to do more work here, pointing to specific features of the facts that create or undermine proximity.

Fair, just and reasonable: This is where policy arguments creep in. Identify them if they are on the facts. If the defendant is a public body, a statutory authority, or operates in an area where courts have historically been reluctant to impose duties (such as pure economic loss), say so and reason through it.

For each element, reach a sub-conclusion. "On the facts, foreseeability is clearly satisfied because... Proximity is more arguable because... The third limb would likely be satisfied because courts have consistently imposed duties on manufacturers in analogous circumstances." That layered reasoning is what a first-class answer looks like.

Arguing Both Sides Without Sitting on the Fence

A common piece of advice is to "consider both sides." Done badly, this means writing a paragraph for the claimant, a paragraph for the defendant, and never committing to anything. That is not legal reasoning. It is evasion.

The right approach is to identify where the genuine legal uncertainty lies, explore it properly, and then commit to a conclusion that explains which argument you think is stronger and why. "The defendant will argue X because of case Y. This is countered by the claimant's position that Z, supported by case W. On balance, the claimant's argument is more persuasive because the facts here are closer to case W than to case Y, given that..." That is advocacy. That is what the examiner is looking for.

Using Cases in Application

Cases serve two functions in application: they supply analogies, and they supply distinctions. Both are valuable.

If the facts of your problem are close to a decided case, say so and use it. If they differ in a material way, distinguish the case and explain why that difference matters legally. The skill is being precise about which fact matters and why. "In Goldman v Hargrave [1967] 1 AC 645, the Privy Council held that an occupier had a measured duty to act reasonably to prevent a naturally occurring hazard on their land from spreading to a neighbour's property. The facts here are analogous in that the defendant was aware of the risk and had the means to address it, but differ in that..." See *Goldman v Hargrave* for the full reasoning.

Do not drop case names as decoration. Every case you cite should be doing a job in your argument.

Step Four: Conclusion

Keep it short. The conclusion is a direct answer to the issue you identified in Step One. It is not a summary of everything you have said. One to three sentences is usually enough.

"On the facts, X is likely to owe Y a duty of care. Breach and causation will depend on the further findings of fact discussed below, but the duty point is, in my view, established."

That is a conclusion. It answers the question and points forward where necessary. It does not re-explain the rule or re-describe the facts.

Structuring a Multi-Issue Answer

Most problem questions require you to run IRAC multiple times. A negligence question might require you to address duty, breach, causation, remoteness, and one or two defences. A contract question might cover offer and acceptance, consideration, terms, and a vitiating factor. Do not try to wrap all of this into one IRAC loop. Run a separate loop for each issue.

The structure looks like this:

1. Issue 1: Duty of care

- Rule, Application, Conclusion

1. Issue 2: Breach

- Rule, Application, Conclusion

1. Issue 3: Causation

- Rule, Application, Conclusion

1. Issue 4: Contributory negligence (if applicable)

- Rule, Application, Conclusion

Use subheadings in a coursework answer. In an exam, a clear paragraph break and a topic sentence that names the issue will do the same job.

Note that some issues are conditional on others. You should acknowledge this explicitly: "Assuming a duty of care is established, the next question is whether the defendant breached that duty." This shows the examiner you understand the logical structure of the cause of action.

Common Mistakes That Cost You Marks

Writing law essays inside problem questions. A problem question is not asking you to discuss the historical development of the neighbour principle. It is asking you to advise a client. Keep everything anchored to the facts.

Forgetting the client's perspective. You are advising someone. Frame your conclusions in terms of what they can do, what their prospects are, what risks they face.

Burying the issue. Some students spend three paragraphs circling an issue before naming it. Name it in your first sentence.

Treating the conclusion as optional. Every IRAC cycle needs a conclusion. Even if the answer is uncertain, say so and explain why.

Ignoring facts. If the examiner has put a detail in the scenario, it is there for a reason. A fact you have not used is usually an issue you have missed.

Over-citing. Three cases cited precisely and applied well beats ten cases dropped in to demonstrate reading. Quality over quantity, always.

A Note on IRAC Variants

You will encounter variations: CLEO (Claim, Law, Evaluation, Outcome), MIRAT, FILAC. They are all doing the same structural job. The letters differ slightly between institutions and between LLB and SQE preparation materials. If your course or SQE prep provider uses a specific variant, use that label. The underlying reasoning process is identical.

For SQE1, the functioning legal knowledge statements mean you need to apply rules to facts quickly and accurately under time pressure. IRAC is your friend here: it keeps your analysis disciplined when you have limited time per question.

Practising This Properly

Reading about IRAC is not enough. You need to write under conditions that resemble an exam. Take a past problem question, cover the answer, write your own response following the structure above, and then compare it to a model answer. Look specifically at how the model answer handles the Application section. That is the benchmark.

You can find past papers with model answers at Caselaw's past papers tool, which lets you practise with answers you can actually learn from rather than just checking whether you spotted the right cases.

If you are working on a specific subject, building your understanding of the leading cases in that area is the foundation everything else rests on. The Equity and Trusts topic hub is a good example of how to approach a subject systematically before you attempt problem questions in it.