There is a lot more preparation required than you might imagine for writing a first-class essay, especially a law essay. Today, we’ll talk about the simplest, most useful tips that will help you get good grades on your law essay from the first day of law school until the last.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
But hold on.
I have to say something first before we get into the juicy advice.
It’s crucial to understand that how you approach an essay differs from how you tackle a problematic topic.
This is so because essay questions and problem questions are two different kinds of tasks. Understanding the type of project, you will be working on will help you decide how to tackle it most effectively.
For instance, legal issue questions can be answered in a definite way, whereas essays call for a more subjective approach. This essentially means that you are free to choose how you want to respond to an essay question. Once you keep this in mind and are aware of it, your essay will be successful.
Now that we have made everything clear, let’s investigate these suggestions!
1) You Must Plan Your Essay
It should go without saying that planning your essay requires time, love, and care. I constantly tell myself when composing an essay, “Don’t start writing until you have a clear idea in your mind.” My finest essays were those in which I truly took the time to sit down and consider my response.
Here are some doable but practical suggestions for organising the first-class law essay:
- In the body of your essay, underline important words and phrases.
- Write down all of the terms you think of that are underlined.
- Find a connection between each of these expressions.
- Based on these words, build a strong strategy for your response.
- Don’t just plan a response that includes “everything you know about the topic” without first doing a lot of research and figuring out exactly what the law says.
2) Be Very Clear When Introducing Yourself
It is preferable, in my opinion, to express your opinion in the opening, whether you agree or disagree with the essay’s title.
You should do this because you want to take the professor or examiner on a journey. Every excellent story has a captivating start that establishes the tone for the entire narrative. Law essays should follow the same rule: be concise and straightforward.
Naturally, you cannot write in the first person (such as “I believe that…” or “I concur with the aforementioned assertion…”). A law school no-no, this. I am aware that learning to convey your thoughts in the third person is challenging. However, keep in mind that there are a million different ways to express or perform the same thing.
I completely understand why students sometimes find it difficult to use the third-person narrative in their phrases. One law student can only write so many “This proves that…” statements! You WILL get there; it took me a lot of practice to get there as well. I swear to you.
Look up academic journals in your preferred database, then read them. Often, the authors will use the third person to describe their points of view.
3) FIRST WRITE YOUR INTRODUCTION
You’re probably wondering, “What?! The introduction is indeed the most difficult to write. However, for the majority of students, beginning an essay might also be challenging.
The majority of us, and I understand this, prefer to conduct research before writing. But I’m urging you to draught a preliminary version of your introduction. This has the advantage that nobody submits their rough draught. Even if it’s only one line, it’s still better to write something than nothing for your essay!
4) SMALL PARAGRAPH, SMALL PARAGRAPH, SMALL PARAGRAPH!
We are excellent ramblers, which is one of the most bittersweet aspects of law school (I don’t think we can argue with that!). However, when it comes to essays, we are given a word limit, and we must adhere to it. We are simply wasting marks if our paragraphs are too long!
One piece of advice is to address one idea in every paragraph. There is a chance that a paragraph will become overly long if you begin to blend several themes into it. With practice, you can fit more than one argument into a single paragraph, but practice wouldn’t tell you to do that.
This makes sure that your paragraph stays focused on the key argument you are making.
5) BE MINDFUL WHEN USING CASE LAW, PLEASE
You need to be mindful of whether you are responding to a problem issue or an essay question, as I stated at the beginning of this blog post. Case law follows the same rules. In contrast to problem questions, there is a precise manner in which to apply case law in essays.
Typically, while citing a case in an essay, you are doing so to support your position. It’s not like problem questions where you have to cite specific situations since one particular case serves as the test for negligence. No, cases are utilised to support your thesis in essays.
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6) COMPOUND CONSTRUCTIONS SHOULD BE ELIMINATED TO THE MAXIMUM
You might wonder, though, what a compound construction is.
Every law student does this, and I completely understand why they do it, but it’s probably one of the least required things you can do in your essays.
Do any of these phrases seem familiar to you?
Considering this…
As already mentioned,
“With the intent of…”
“About…”
“Because of…”
They are compound creations, as you could have guessed!
In essence, it indicates that you are using three or four words when only one or two words would do. Because you have a word limit, you want to use as many words as possible. One way to do this is to use fewer compound structures in your essays.
As you write your essay, you want to sound like a lawyer and act like a lawyer. These are popular legal expressions, and I get them.
I also did it! But if you want to make the most of your word count and write a quality essay, my advice is to avoid compound sentences.
They are not required.
This is not to say that you should never, ever use them; rather, use them sparingly. These are the first things I would focus on if you are under pressure to reduce your word count. You don’t have to eliminate all of the complex constructions, but in my experience, it has helped with my assignments and my word count. I would look at my work, highlight all of the compound structures, and then remove as many of them as necessary.
7) CHECK YOUR TENSES
After my first year of school, I came to realise that I tended to mix up my tenses when I was typing up my essays. One evening, as I was doing the standard law student thing, researching, I came across an article online about writing essays. And after some study, I stumbled across a post (I’ll link to it when I do; it’s been more than two years!) Moreover, this post advises readers to “be aware of your tenses.” It is simple to switch between tenses, but be careful.
It’s remarkable how your essay will improve if you start being proactive about checking for the tiny things, like your tenses or compound constructions.
I remember aiming for a first-class grade on one of my law essay—I think it was the one on immigration and asylum—because it was the first assignment of my final year of law school. By carefully going over each one, I made sure that every word, sentence, paragraph, heading, and tense was consistent. Is that a little too fixated? Most likely, but it eventually succeeded!
FINAL COMMENT…
Essentially, paying attention to those minor details is the key to getting a first-class law essay. Although you might not have given it much thought at the time, your instructor, lecturer, or examiner will. They have been doing this for a while, so they are good at picking up on these little subtleties. It encourages them to want to give you a very good score by making their work simpler! That’s what we want, so!
I sincerely hope you found my blog post about writing strong essays quite helpful.