Critique of a Legal Memorandum We were tasked to critique a legal memorandum from one of the law offices here in Davao.

I decided to critique the sample memorandum to the Court of Appeals given by Atty. Leilani Yangyang-Espejo. The case involved in this legal memorandum was a Special Civil Action for Certiorari with Application for the Issuance of a Writ of Preliminary Injunction and Temporary Restraining Order between a private corporation and the corporations employees union. As a whole the legal memorandum was well made. It was written with the use of proper grammar and was written in the proper form. The typeface use was readable. The different parts were easy to identify as there were proper headings used. While the average of the sentences used were more than 20 words, each sentence was of varying length of 10 words to 40 words. The paragraphs were generally short and were also of varying lengths. The important ideas were highlighted either in boldface or it was underlined. Although all capitals were used, they were used only for the headings to identify the different issues tackled in the Arguments/Discussions. Quotations of different statutes and jurisprudence were also woven in the Arguments/Discussions properly. This memorandum more or less followed the format suggested by Judge Daray. It has all the parts mentioned in the lecture except for the Conclusion and the order for Statement of the Case and the Statement of Facts were reversed. The Caption and Title of the memorandum was proper. The caption stated that it was for the Minadanao Station of the Court of Appeals which is located at Cagayan de Oro City. The parties were listed correctly. Since both parties were juridical persons their representatives were also listed. It was also indicated that the memorandum was for the petitioner. The private respondent and the public respondent were also indicated properly. While Introductions are not that important, it was helpful that there was one in this case. It mentioned that the petitioner thru counsel received a copy of a Notice of Resolution on May 19, 2010 and that they had to pass their respective memoranda 15 days from notice and such memorandum was in compliance with that order. The next part of the memorandum was the Statement of Facts. This part of the memorandum was very well done. It summarized the salient facts of the case briefly. There were only 5 paragraphs which comprised only a page of the 30 page memorandum. The statements did not start with the word that an d were in fact in paragraph form. The Statement of Facts in this memorandum gave a clear background of the controversy. The facts were all relevant to the issues and were presented them in a manner that it does not show any bias to the petitioner. The Statement of Facts was followed by the Statement of the Case. It gave a thorough discussion of all the events in the case that happened in the various forums

that handled it. The events were mentioned chronologically. It started with the lodging of the complaint by the private respondent before the Office the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) and ended with the issuance of the Order by the Honorable Voluntary Arbitrator denying the Petitioners Motion for Reconsideration and directing that a writ of execution be issued to enforce the Decision. There were three issues in the legal memorandum. They were numbered accordingly. The first issue questioned the Honorable Voluntary Arbitrator taking cognizance of the case lodged by the private respondent. The second questioned the ruling the public respondent issued. The third issue asked whether it has become final and executory. The Arguments/Discussions followed the Issues. They were written in accordance with the issues identified. While the arguments were not numbered, there was a heading for each argument to relate it to the issues. The headings were the issues written in capital letters and in bold form. The Arguments/Discussion was really the main part of the legal memorandum as it comprised around 20 pages of the document. It was very comprehensive. Each argument thoroughly discussed all the applicable laws and jurisprudence for each of the issues in the case. The memorandum was rich in case law. There were around 15 cases cited in the Arguments/Discussions. Each of them was properly cited with their corresponding G.R. Numbers and Dates of Issuance instead of a SCRA citation. The memorandum did not cite any secondary source. All the laws and jurisprudence were from primary sources. As I mentioned earlier, there was no Conclusion in the legal memorandum I critiqued. It would have been helpful if there was one since the legal memorandum was comprised of 30 pages. The Prayer of the memorandum contained all what the petitioner really want from the Court. It asked that the public respondent be found to have acted without or in excess of his jurisdiction for the issuance of the Decision. They also asked for the review, reversal, annulment or setting aside of the said Decision and that both public and private respondents be permanently enjoined from executing the said Decision. Lastly there was also a general prayer of grant of such other reliefs which are just and equitable in the premises. This legal memorandum was well made. The judges or justices who would read this would be able to easily peruse this document and glean the information necessary for them to make a decision. It was well researched and the arguments were backed by both statutory provisions and case laws. However there is still room for improvement.