Draft a Legal Memo in 30 Seconds

Looking for the full toolkit? Start at the AI memo generator to draft any internal memo, or jump to the policy memo template for organization-wide directives.

What is a legal memo?

A legal memorandum — often called an interoffice memo or office memo — is the workhorse document of legal research. An associate writes one to answer a discrete legal question for a supervising attorney: given these facts and this jurisdiction, how is a court likely to rule? Unlike a brief, the legal memo is objective. Its value is candor: it predicts the outcome, surfaces the weaknesses, and tells the reader what they need to know to make a decision, not what they want to hear.

The standard legal memo format

Most firms and law schools expect the same skeleton, and a good legal memo template makes each section explicit:

• Heading — To, From, Date, and a precise Re line naming the client and the issue.
• Question Presented — the legal question framed in one sentence, with the key facts baked in.
• Brief Answer — a short, direct prediction ("Probably yes, because...") so a busy partner gets the bottom line first.
• Statement of Facts — the legally relevant facts, told neutrally and in a logical order.
• Discussion — the analytical heart, organized by issue using IRAC: the rule, application to your facts, the counterargument, and your reasoning.
• Conclusion — a fuller restatement of the prediction with any caveats or recommended next steps.

Common mistakes to avoid

The most frequent failure is advocacy creeping into an objective memo — burying the bad facts makes the prediction useless. Other pitfalls: a Question Presented that is too abstract to answer, a Discussion that recites law without applying it to the facts, and citations that are not checked against primary authority. A memo is only as good as the research behind it, so treat the AI draft as a structured starting point and verify every rule and cite.

Generate yours in seconds

Describe the question, the facts, and the jurisdiction, and EZdoc returns a properly structured legal memorandum you can refine, cite, and export to PDF. When you need an internal directive instead of a research memo, switch to a business memo template from the same generator.