The Road Not Taken: Reviving IRAC For In-House Emails

When working in-house, what are the most important things to include in an email to ensure you'll get the response you need?

Email in InboxMy dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. Emperor Joseph II — Amadeus.

Lawyers are word-wielders. It is what we do. We all believe we have at least minimal competency with language. Our early mentors probably told us at least once, “words have meaning,” and we all fretted over word choice as part of law school writing assignments.

Law school taught us the foundation, but then the actual practice of law untaught us. Nobody has time to read all the words involved in an IRAC analysis and many legal employers have to teach newly minted attorneys how to write for their specific areas of law, whether litigation, appellate work, or transactional work. In law school, we learned to write with many words. We spend the rest of our career learning to use fewer.

For in-house lawyers, especially those  of us who frequently interact with our non-legal colleagues, we’ve had to unlearn our law-school foundations even further. These days, when email communication is common, and texts and tweets are even more common, we have had to learn to communicate with as  few words as possible.

Personally, I love a long, well thought-out email. I get a cup of tea and settle in to revel in the background of the situation and marvel at the comprehensive context my colleague has taken the time to craft for me. Most people, however, open an email with more than three lines and immediately close it. It takes too much time and emotional energy to give an email like that the attention it needs; with too many words it’s easier to close it and save it for later.

Unfortunately, I need my emails to be read — often sooner rather than later. That means making the email as easy to read as possible. To do this, I need to take advantage of the immediately visible space: the subject line and the first few lines visible as part of email preview pane. There is no room for a complete recitation of the facts, the issue being discussed, and additional paragraphs to provide the reader with the appropriate context in which to understand the issue. Then, after that, to provide an opinion caveated with disclaimers that the analysis is based on facts available at the time, subject to change, and was made only as part of the context described.

When drafting an email to my non-legal colleagues, I first determine what I need from the colleague. Is this truly an FYI without need for a response? Do I need a response from this colleague? If so, what kind? Will a yes or no do, or do I need something more in-depth?

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These questions guide the structure of the email. If there is an email chain I can rely on for background, I do. If I only need a yes or no answer from the recipient, I craft the email to elicit such a response. If I need something more, I specifically ask for it. This is a simple concept: ask for what you need, but very frequently, requests are embedded in statements and questions that don’t require responses are included.

Once I have determined what I need from the colleague, I draft the email. Detailed background information can be saved for later follow-up (or, if available, referenced in an email thread). Ultimately, my colleague needs to know: “What is the issue?” and “What do you need from me?” The answers to those two questions should be clear in the first two lines of the email. Everything else in the email can cover the details, but the first two lines should make it possible for my colleague to review easily on a mobile device. I like to include the specific request to my colleague in these first few lines and close with the same request to make it easier for my colleagues to respond even if they are on a mobile device. Again, if it is easy, they are more likely to pay attention to the email and take the action.

The middle portion of the email can be used for the specifics of the matter at hand, creating a history of the events if necessary. If this history is known by the recipients, I will call it out to give the recipients permission to scan the contents of that portion. There are reasons why it would make sense for us to recount the history of a matter in an email even though the recipients are all aware of that history. Those reasons are not pertinent to the purpose of this column — the point is, I tell my readers the portions they can skim.

Finally, I close with the actions that are being taken and a repeat of the request set forth in the first few lines of the action I need my colleague to take in response to the email.

I suppose this is its own version of IRAC: Issue, Request, Annotated history, and “Could you please?”

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Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.