Day to day "Framework"

I’ve been thinking about taking a “framework” for writing, a framework learned in law school for analyzing cases, and showing you all how to use it in your day to day. Here it is:

Issue

Rule

Analysis

Conclusion

The law school folks call it by its acronym IRAC.

In an email, or just talking in a meeting, you’d say something like:

“The issue on the table is _______.

The traditional way we’ve handled these kinds of things

is _____.

Here’s some current data on it:

My conclusion is that we _______.”

Here’s an email example.

The issue I’m writing about is some concern we have about the vendor. Traditionally we’ve turned to them in situations like this. However, they’ve been late with due dates, they’ve placed new people on our internal team that a lot of folks have doubts about and their invoices are getting out of hand. We’ve reached a point where they need to be given a stern warning about the risk they are running of losing our account.

We place a lot of emphasis on conciseness. I think you’ll find this helpful.