I completely agree with what everyone has said about the IRAC structure. I just wanted to add something that the OP might find useful. One of my professors is a very successful attorney who retired from practice. You can guess it has been awhile for her since law school. (I really get the sense she teaches because she enjoys it.) On one of our writing assignments, someone asked whether she preferred IRAC structure, and she straight out did not know WTF it was. She had never heard of it.

This is what she said though. “Make sure the facts fit with the law.”

That’s fundamentally what you’re trying to do on law exams. The IRAC structure is basically training wheels for you to do that, and I do not mean that in a condescending way whatsoever.

I tell you all this because, if you look at grading rubrics, most of your points come from analysis — that is, fitting the facts to the law. However, you absolutely cannot get there if you can’t spot the issues or don’t know the rules (which is more memorization-based). So make sure you have those down first.

The reason I like the “fit the facts to the law” philosophy though is that it highlights something particular that the IRAC structure may not make clear. You don’t get points from just reiterating the facts from the question, and students fall into this mistake all the time. You also don’t get points (or at least not that many) for listing the rules. (Totally off-topic, but one professor basically designed finals so that you were penalized for discussing the rules. The rubric gave absolutely zero points for discussing the rules, and there was not enough time to finish the exam just from analyzing. So anyone who fell into the trap of listing rules was at an extreme disadvantage.)

You get points from applying those facts to the law (the rules). That’s your end game, but don’t forget the fundamentals.