Writing Law Essays: How to Analyse the Essay Question
May 12, 2011 | Law Essay
Are you having difficulty in writing law essays? Here’s a brief guide to help you get through with law essay writing seamlessly:
Understand the essay question.
No matter how good your research skills are, the closest thing you’ll be getting is a passing grade for giving the wrong answer to the right question, uh, that is, if you misunderstand the question in the very first place. Thus take time to fully break down the question into details.
Two Components of Law Essay Question
Most essay questions, and law essays are no different, have two components:
- The subject matter – this is the debatable issue or specific legal topic that you are asked to comment on.
- The instructions – these are the directions telling or asking you what to do regarding the subject matter. Directions further divide into two categories: analytical and descriptive. Descriptive instructions, such as define and outline require you to provide a cogent explanation of something in your own words. Analytical questions use the keywords criticise and/or discuss which asks you to evaluate the value or worth of something.
At times, professors embed directions within the phrasing of the title. In such a case, you’ll be better off by carefully paraphrasing the instruction words in such a manner as to arrive at a workable plan of writing the essay.
Re-writing the title as a series of questions
Whenever you find it challenging to expound on the meaning of the law essay title in your mind, whilst making sure that you are still in line with the point, rewriting the title as a series of categorised law essay questions may help. Affording many advantages, you can use these questions accordingly in charting an extensive outline of ideas, scheduling enough time for research, and structuring the discourse logically.
