How To Write Law Essays For University And College

Updated on September 22, 2016 DesignSpace moreContact Author So how do you write great law essays for university, college or Law School? Whether you are just starting out as a law student or are just looking for ways to improve your essay writing technique (and your grades!), then this article will be right up your alley. I have a first class law degree from Cambridge University in the UK and an Master of Laws from Harvard in the US, so I’ve had a huge amount of experience in writing legal essays of all kinds. These techniques come from a combination of my own experience and the advice of my professors, supervisors and tutors. Problem question essays are ones in which you are given an imaginary (and often convoluted) scenario and asked to comment on the legal issues that arise, and advise one or more of the parties. Say you have an problem on whether or not there has been an infringement of UK copyright law, and the facts look similar to a particular case you’ve read on a defence to copyright infringement. Your first instinct is to start talking about defences. Stop. Ignore the similarity completely for now, and think.

Before we can even discuss defences, we need to talk about whether the defendant is liable for copyright infringement at all. What does the law actually require me to establish to put liability on someone? Develop a set of steps that you put every scenario relating to that area of the law through in order. For example, mine for copyright can be summarized in the mnemonic ‘SOOTIE’: Subject matter (the type of works at issue), originality, ownership, term (has the copyright expired), infringements (has an infringing use been established), exceptions and defences. This doesn’t mean you have devote a whole paragraph to every step. If its uncontroversial that B owns the copyright (or the problem just flat out tells you), a single sentence pointing this out will suffice. The most controversial and difficult points should be given the majority of your essay’s attention. The important thing however is that you have completed each necessary step in the order in which they arose and in the order in which a court of law would most naturally consider them.

It also stops you missing interesting elements of problem questions that you would otherwise miss by skipping straight to the most obvious step. Often times there will be more than one set of laws or crimes at issue across a single problem question. Or, it might be the same area of law, but you have to discuss how it affects different people in different positions in the scenario. The structure method I explained above will allow you to organize the structure of each issue, but how do you organize the essay as a whole? A good rule is to deal with each area of the law in turn, giving each its own separate section rather than commenting on each event chronologically. As for which sections should come first, always be on the lookout for areas of the law which might then affect other laws or later parts of the question, and do those first. Mind Mapping: How to Create Mind Maps Step-By-Step (Mind Map Templates, Speed Mind Maps, and Advanced Mind Mapping)Learning how to use mind-maps can significantly improve you planning and structuring skills.

This book is a good guide, and if you have Kindle Unlimited you can get it for free! Buy Now Not Enough Information Given? It is completely fine to state ‘the problem question does not give us enough information’. However, saying that there isn’t enough information is NOT enough. You must then go on to say what information you would need to evaluate how the law applies to the facts, and then explain how the law would apply to the facts if the right information was available. Here’s a good video summary of the above points with a few extra hints. Sometimes a bit of information might be thrown at you that actually has nothing to do at all with the law or the outcome of a case and has no bearing at all on the answer to a question. Yes, this actually happens some times in set problem questions, the people who write them are a bit sadistic like that. About half the people answering the question will panic and start guessing at how the information is relevant to the problem.

Don’t be one of them. When this happens it is always good to comment on it though – just point out that the information is a red herring that has no relevance to the facts of the case. You can get bonus points too if you can come up with some quick explanation as to why the law doesn’t consider this kind of factor of information relevant to the legal outcome, if there is one. This type of essay will require you to make an argument regarding some facet of the law – was Joe Bloggs vs John Smith correctly decided, how would you reform the law in this area, and so on. What is the Question Actually Asking You? This doesn’t just apply to law essays. My Chemistry teacher at A level would always write in big red letters on our essays ‘RTFQ, ATFQ’. Read the flaming question, answer the flaming question.