1. How to write UK law essays

How to write UK law essays: introduction

Define the key legal concept OR restate the key facts

Key legal concept is the main concept which you will be discussing throughout your essay. In order to identify it, you need to ask yourself: "What area of public law/contract law/tort law/criminal law (etc.) is this essay about?". Introducing a key legal concept at the beginning of your essay-style assignment will improve your marks.

Whenever you are dealing with a problem-style assignment, your first step should be to restate the key facts from the scenario. Key facts are those facts that are most relevant to the legal issues that you will be writing about. When writing a shorter essay, you will have to select fewer key facts to mention, because you will only have space for one or two short sentences discussing them. If you are writing a longer essay, you might provide more details about the key facts from the scenario.

Introduce the central argument OR purpose

We're now going to tackle the central argument of your essay-style assignment. The central argument is the main argument you will be making throughout your essay. It lets the reader know how you plan on approaching the discussion of the key legal concept you introduced earlier. For example, your central argument could be: "The UK Parliament is no longer supreme".

If you're working on a problem-style essay, after the key facts it's time to introduce the purpose of your essay. The purpose of the essay is to provide advice to someone. Therefore, you should explain to whom your essay will provide advice on WHAT in the next paragraph. As an example, you might be advising James on whether he committed a criminal offence or Jessica on whether she entered into a legally binding contract.

Present the structure

After you explain your key legal concept and introduce your central argument in your essay-style assignment, it's time to present the essay structure. Typically, this means listing your essay's headings in the order that they will appear. If you're writing an essay about parliamentary supremacy, your headings could be: "Interpretation of legislation by UK courts, Implied repeal doctrine, Judicial review of legislation". In short essays, you only have a sentence or two to present your structure, so you will only mention the headings. If you're writing a longer essay, you will have enough room to explain what each heading means.

Similarly, in a problem-style assignment the last part of your introduction should present the essay structure. In other words, you'll need to list the headings in the order that they'll appear in your essay. There's usually one legal issue under each heading in problem-style essays, which makes naming them easier. If you're writing a tort law essay with three legal issues, your headings might be: "Liability for Peter’s physical injuries, Liability for Mary’s physical injuries and death, Liability for Jade’s financial loss". One or two short sentences are enough to list your headings in a short essay. In longer essays, you can talk a bit about what each heading includes.

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How to write UK law essays: main body

Turn key arguments OR legal issues into headings

If you want to convince your readers to agree with the central argument in your essay-style assignment, then your essay should be full of supporting arguments. Typically, an essay of 2,500 words will have around 3-4 supporting arguments. Each argument will include a detailed discussion of the relevant cases and/or statute sections. Reading the lecture slides, textbook, and relevant journal articles will help you identify the supporting arguments.

Planning out the main body of your essay will be easy in the case of a problem-style question. If your problem scenario relates to one person, the only thing you have to do is identify the legal issues related to the events that happened to that person. Each legal issue should be a separate heading in your essay. If there are several persons that you will have to advise in the scenario, then each heading can be devoted to the legal issue(s) related to one person.

Briefly explain each key argument OR key facts and legal issue(s)

In an essay-style assignment, at the beginning of each heading you need to explain what that heading is about. This means including 1 to 2 sentences that introduce the supporting argument that you will be discussing. At this point, details or evaluations are not required. For now you should only set the scene by explaining the basic assumptions of your supporting argument.

If you’re working on a problem-style assignment, each heading should do two things: explain the key facts and restate the legal issue(s). You mentioned the key facts in the introduction to your essay, but back then the facts were more generic. Here, you will focus on facts related to this heading. Then, you need to explain in one or two short sentences what is the legal issue or issues you will be dealing with in the heading.

Critically evaluate cases and statute sections

The main bulk of each heading of your assignment should include a critical evaluation of the right cases and statute sections. This applies to both essay-style and problem-style assignments. Simply stating the legal rules in your law essay will not bring you any closer to getting a first. If you are dealing with an essay-style assignment, then you need to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the cases and statute sections you selected for your supporting argument. For example:

• Do the legal rules established by those cases or statute sections fulfil their purpose?
• Do they have any unintended negative consequences? What are they?
• Could they be improved in any way? How?

In the case of a problem-style assignment your critical evaluation should focus on what each case or statute section tells us about the legal issue under your heading. For example:

• Does the rule established in the case or statute section apply to the legal issue? Why? In what way?
• Does it make the contract more likely to be considered valid by the court? Why?
• Does it make it more likely that the person mentioned in the scenario committed a crime? Why?

Using this approach, you will make the main body of your essay evaluative rather than descriptive. And that’s where the high marks come from.

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How to write UK law essays: conclusion

How to write a conclusion for essay-style UK law essay

After you restate your central argument, give a few reasons why you argued that opinion. The main body of your essay has plenty of those reasons. If you remember, in the previous section of this article we called them "supporting arguments". Each of the headings in your main body contains one supporting argument. In the conclusion your task is to write a brief summary of each of the supporting arguments (i.e. each heading).

Let's say your essay is about 1,500 words long and has three headings. You should include four sentences in your conclusion: one restating your main argument and one summarising each heading. That's easy, right? Now let's talk about how to write conclusions for problem-style essays.

How to write a conclusion for problem-style UK law essay

It's really easy to write a conclusion for a problem-style essay. As opposed to an essay-style question, there usually isn't a single central argument throughout the essay. So you don't need to mention it in the conclusion. In your conclusion, you should acknowledge that the essay you just wrote dealt with legal issues related to a particular area of law. As an example, you could say: “The above sections evaluated whether”. It's that straightforward.

The next step is easy too. Just restate your conclusion at the end of each heading in your main body. What advice did you provide to the person about their legal issue? Are they likely to be convicted of a particular crime? Is it likely that there was a breach of contract?

Use between 1 and 3 sentences to sum up each heading, depending on how long your essay is. For instance, in a 1,500-word essay your conclusion will have a general sentence referring to the legal issues discussed in the essay, and three short sentences - one for each heading. It's easy, right?

2. How to write UK law exams

How to write UK law exam answers: introduction

Answering problem questions, general essay questions, specific essay questions, or quotation essay questions requires different introductions. In general, your exam answer introduction should follow this format.

Introduce the background OR key facts

In this section, you'll include a sentence with basic information about your exam answer. Background is important in an essay-style exam answer because it helps the reader understand the context of the question you'll be answering. In problem-style exam answers, just restate the key facts from the scenario that pertain to the legal issues you'll discuss.

State the central argument OR outline legal issues

If you're writing an essay-style exam answer, you should start by identifying the central argument. This is your main opinion about the area or law you'll discuss in your exam answer. As an introduction to a problem-style exam question, instead of a central argument, you'll outline the legal issues you'll discuss.

Outline the exam answer structure

End your introduction with an outline of your exam answer. The outline should include your exam answer headings. You can just list them here to let the reader know which arguments you're going to discuss.

How to write UK law exam answers: main body

Make a list of key arguments OR identify legal issues

You already know that an essay-style law exam answer's central argument is its main point. In your exam answer, you need to back up your central argument with supporting arguments. Your exam answer is likely to be around 1,000 words with 2 to 3 supporting arguments, each in a separate paragraph. In each paragraph you will discuss cases and/or statute sections supporting each argument.

It's even easier to plan out the main body of your exam answer when dealing with a problem-style question. All you have to do is identify 2 to 4 legal issues you will discuss in your answer and devote one paragraph to each. If you advise multiple people in your law exam answer, give them each a paragraph.

Organise the key arguments OR legal issues

Organise your key arguments so they best support your central argument in your exam answer. Your exam answer should persuade the reader to agree with your central argument. Think about which supporting argument should come first, second and third to achieve this. If you are dealing with a problem-style exam question, you should arrange your legal issues in the order they appear in the scenario.

Evaluate the cases and statute sections

Each paragraph in your main body should include cases and statute sections. This is true for essay-style and problem-based assignments. As with writing law essays, you won't get a first if you merely state the legal rules. If you are writing an answer to an essay-style exam question, you need to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the relevant cases and statute sections. For example:

• Are the legal rules established by those cases or statute sections effective?
• Is there any negative impact they have unintentionally?
• Is there any way they could be improved?

For problem-style assignments, you should evaluate each case or section of statute according to what it tells you about the legal issue. For example:

• Does the case or statute section increase the likelihood of the contract being considered valid by the court? Why?
• Does it increase the chances that the person in the scenario committed a crime? Why?

This approach will allow you to make your essay more evaluative than descriptive. It's from there those high marks are earned.

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How to write UK law exam answers: conclusion

Restate the central argument OR final opinion about legal issues

Essentially, the conclusion summarises what was discussed in the main body of your exam answer. That's why your essay-style law exam answer conclusion should not introduce any additional supporting arguments. It should begin by restating your central argument - just like you did in the introduction. This usually takes 1 to 2 short sentences.

In a problem-style exam answer, your first sentence or two should state what conclusion you reached regarding each legal issue discussed. For example: Is Jack likely to be convicted of murder? Was the hospital negligent in treating Jane? This will give the reader a clear view of what your essay should have convinced them about.

Restate key supporting arguments OR examples from main body

After restating the central argument in your essay-style exam answer, the remaining 2 to 3 sentences of your law exam answer should be devoted to briefly describing the 2 to 3 supporting arguments that you discussed in the main body of your answer. Remember, you shouldn't repeat the arguments word by word. Your task is to summarise them in a succinct way.

In a problem-style exam question, after introducing the conclusion you reached on each legal issue, you'll use the next 2 to 3 sentences to explain why you came to these specific conclusions. Again, don't just write word by word what you wrote in the main body of the answer. Instead, briefly summarise the key point with regards to each legal issue.