The hallmarks of a good law essay
While most students will have written many essays before coming to the study of law, it is equally true that many law students experience difficulty in understanding exactly what they are being asked to do when they are required to write an essay.
Perhaps the key difference between writing essays in law (and for the moment we include not only essays as such, but also case notes, dissertations and answers to problem questions) and writing in most other subjects within the general area of arts, humanities and social sciences, is the extent to which every proposition you make must be expressed with precision and supported by authority. We are well aware that, in saying this, we will annoy both teachers and students of other subjects, who will almost certainly feel that we are claiming law to be the only truly academically rigorous subject. Of course, we are not asserting that at all. We are merely recording the fact that many students, when coming to law for the first time, experience difficulty with the degree of precision and the extent of authority which is required. Furthermore, the fact that this applies even to those doing postgraduate conversion courses would seem to suggest that success in degree-level study of other subjects does not necessarily ensure success in law. No doubt those who embark on the study of other subjects will have to learn the kind of academic rigour that those subjects require; but our concern is only with the law.Law essays must not only be logically structured presentations of coherent arguments, but must also answer the question and be supported by authority. An essay should not simply be a series of paraphrases of the material you have been referred to, but a critical review of that material. Although your understanding of the relevant material is a prerequisite to success in essay writing, it will not, on its own, be enough. What you must do is demonstrate your understanding; and you will do this by
interpreting the question,
doing the relevant research, and
writing a well-argued answer which demonstrates that you have interpreted the question perceptively and rigorously and done the relevant research thoroughly.
Before elaborating each of these points, it may be worth commenting briefly on two classically bad types of essay.
The more common type is known as the £10 Note Answer, where the student summarises the whole of the law on the topic, rather than selecting and applying only the relevant parts. In other words, the student is effectively saying to the examiner ‘take it out of that and keep the change’.
The other type, which while less common is still too common, is known as the ‘Kings of Israel Answer’, and takes the form of an answer to the question which the student wishes had been set, rather than the one which has actually been set. The name of this type of answer comes from the story of the divinity student who had calculated that an essay on the Kings of Israel was bound to come up in the examination. Unfortunately for the student, this turned out to be a miscalculation, but there was a question which required candidates to distinguish between the major and the minor prophets. Accordingly, our student began his (or was it her?) essay thus: ‘Who am I to distinguish between the major and the minor prophets? However, the Kings of Israel are very interesting … ’ and then proceeded to reproduce the essay which he (or she) had meticulously prepared.
With these cautionary tales in mind, we can now return to the topic of how to write good essays.
More on the topic The hallmarks of a good law essay:
- The Good Faith in European Contract Law Project
- Good Faith and Terms Implied in Law
- Writing good law essays
- A full specimen essay
- 10 Answering Essay Questions
- In his famous 1968 essay, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons', Garrett Hardin chose the sea as an illustrative example.
- VIII. GOOD FAITH: A CIVII IAN PECULIARITY?
- The Good Life v. the Moral Life
- The law of obligations is one of the most significant contributions of Roman law to legal culture, illuminating the civil law tradition more than any other branch of Roman law.
- Roman private law developed from the law of procedure, otherwise recognized as the law relating to actions.