Attendance, Attainment & Making Sense of IRAC for Law Students

Criminal Law with Mooting is a compulsory module for all Law students across the range of Law and ‘Law with’ degrees. It is studied in the 2nd undergraduate year at NLS with 551 students studying on the current full year module. Students typically identify it as an interesting module due to the often gruesome and titillating examples of offences, but attendance can drop off as the year progresses. Students can also struggle to translate complex legal concepts into application to problem question scenarios. In 2022-23 a MySay survey showed 78.4% were overall satisfied with the module and 78.2% of those surveyed were satisfied with teaching methods, albeit with a very low response ratio.

Students on the module are encouraged to use the IRAC structure, namely; identify the Issue; state the Rule; Analyse the facts and come to a Conclusion. In the year 22/23 students in one lecturer’s seminar groups were encouraged to discuss the problem with reference to the model, but no structure for note taking was giving. In 23/24 the same lecturer introduced a grid system, and students were encouraged to collaboratively complete a grid labelled with the different parts of the structure when discussing the problem to inform them how to structure their response to a problem in a coursework scenario.