IRAC
IRAC stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion. It is a form of analysis that all law students employ in reading and reviewing any case. It is one of the first things that you learn in law school. You are repeatedly told to formulate a IRAC for every case that you read so that you can understand the issue involved in the case and the court's ruling on that issue. After you read a number of cases in each topic of law, you will see a pattern develop in terms of how the court address a issue in the law and what type of standards are required or test that the court employes to reach a conclusion in an area of law.
IRAC was very helpful for me to use in my first year, even though I was not your traditional law student. It trained me to think in a issue rules matter. It trained me to automatically look to figure out what the main issue of the case was about, how the court analyze that issue and how it ruled. This was very helpful because later on understanding the court's analysis of issues, help me to format arguments on why the court should rule one way or another in my own legal briefs.
A case is about providing elements of the law to establish a cause of action. For each element, there are issues that must be proven or established. Learning and understanding the IRAC method of thinking and analyzing helps one think like a lawyer if that is possible.