Writing law essays is a critical part of a law student’s university education. More importantly, it is a recurring endeavour - where progress is often expected. Yet, even with this necessity driving students (as well as comprehensive and detailed notes by university lecturers), students often fail to score a high mark at the essay. Therefore, a short guide on how to organize and compose the law essay will follow.

Often, the primary mistake made by students in the composition of this type of essay (or actually any non-fiction essay at all) is that the main question has not been addressed. Before you start writing this type of the essay, you should develop coherent and comprehensive plan. Try to avoid the generalities and stick to specific facts; logical and critical analysis is extremely important in the completion of this type of the essay paper. You should not just provide your reader with the list of facts. It is necessary to analyze them as well. Apart from this, main points and assertions in this type of essay must be backed up by legal facts, e.g. specific laws and cases. Before you start composing your essay, you should be well versed with current legal controversies as this will certainly help you write a solid essay. However, you should never succumb to particular points of view. Instead, you should stress your own. Try not to be afraid even if the opinions and conjectures of modern scholars differ from your own. Always remember that in the legal profession, rules and laws are always followed, but rarely are they liked.

Of course, your law essay is likely to get high marks only if the topic as well as the subject is thoroughly researched and critically analyzed. Understanding the opposing arguments, and focusing on the weak and strong points of those arguments, is a requirement. In developing your arguments, stick to several important elements, the most important of which are a logical and well-structured style and the presentation of strong points in the supporting of your main thesis. In many cases, students try to compose a paper filled with generalities and cliches. Such papers may prove useful as basic guides for the general public, but they would be useless when presented to experienced law tutors. Remember that law tutors are professionals in legal studies and would definitely prefer to receive essays which critically evaluate existing law problems, rather than those that just write about basic facts on well-known legal issues.

The most important thing, however, is to realise that writing a good law essay is no pipe dream. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all you need to do is to start adhering to the simple to understand principles outlined in this guide, but reading and applying the principles here is at least a good first step.

Note:
While this guide does provide a number of solid points, those points lack real-world examples. For a guide on the subject of law essays, there should have been wide repository of examples to select from. Nevertheless, this article can serve as a basic guide for new law students or as a back-to-basics kind of guide for more experienced law students.