In-Class Exercise: Promissory Estoppel Drafting

This skills lab turns the doctrine of Ricketts v. Scothorn and Conrad v. Fields into a working document. You represent a client who relied on an oral promise that the other side now refuses to honor, and you draft a one-page demand letter that names promissory estoppel as the theory, walks the four elements of R2d § 90 against the facts, and demands a specific remedy with a dollar figure and a doctrinal basis. The point is to move from recognizing the doctrine on a casebook fact pattern to deploying it in the voice of a lawyer.

What to practice

Plead the four R2d § 90 elements in order: a clear and definite promise, reliance the promisor should have foreseen, actual reliance to your client’s detriment, and injustice that only enforcement can avoid. Then choose a remedy and defend it. Reliance damages restore your client to the position before the promise; expectation damages give the benefit of the bargain. R2d § 90 lets the court limit the remedy “as justice requires,” so name which measure you seek and why the facts support it.

This meeting may run as an in-class workshop, a take-home prompt, or not at all; the professor decides each semester. Any work submitted counts toward Class Participation, and there is no separate grade for the exercise.