One of the requirements that will be expected of you if you are taking a Law degree in a British university is to produce Law essays assigned by your law professor. Law essays are a standard requirement whether you are studying an on-campus Law degree or an online program. The UK essay you will write should be worthy of a professor’s passing marks or even higher ones.

When planning and writing your law essays, you may use the evaluation of law essays that you see your British professors use. Read on for tips on the evaluation and how to use it:

• Answer the essay question in full. A law professor appreciates students who really work hard and show effort in answering the essay question assigned to them in full. For the student, this means that he or she should not neglect, overlook or skip a topic or any of its corresponding parts. When planning what to do to answer the question, write about it in such a way that it shows that you understand about all the aspects that the question covers. This way, your essay gives the air of being written by someone knowledgeable and thus, credible.

• Do what is required of you in the essay. Sometimes, law professors may not include all of the things they require in an assignment in the instructions. There are times when they put implicit instructions in the way the words in the assignment are phrased or the way they give you instructions in class when discussing the assignment. This is because they want to test whether you have the skill of reading between the lines, or seeing things beyond what is easily discernable. This is an important skill that should be developed in a future lawyer. Thus, you should carefully consider what the essay question asks you to do. The ability to follow instructions or demonstrate what is being asked is also a mark of one’s intelligence.

• Carefully consider the structure of your law essays. Law professors appreciate reading essays that have a sound structure because they can follow the arguments easily, and find the points and words that they are looking for purposes of marking.

To write high quality law essays, you must know the different criteria which are used by professors and examiners when marking them. Universities and colleges have their own criteria guidelines that specify what makes up a high quality, average quality and low quality law essay:

• Know Your School’s Standards – In cases wherein the university or college you are in does not have the practice of giving their guidelines for law essays to students, you can ask them or your professor what are the criteria and guidelines. In this way, you can know the standards against which your essays will be marked and you can work towards them. If you know what you should do, you can aim for them and succeed.

• Achieve the Standards – On the other hand, universities and colleges usually have similarities in their criteria and guidelines when it comes to law essays. Most universities and professors would agree that the basic elements of high quality essays which are (1) focus on the essay question and in the context it is asked; (2) intensive knowledge of the student on the topic dealt with and in-depth comprehension of the contextual existence of the topic; (3) comprehensive discussion of the topic and question which is broad and accurate, without or almost without material errors or omissions concerning to the law tackled; (4) pointing out of at least a few of the less noticed point of the law; (5) excellent clarity of the framework, argument and writing style; (6) outstanding use of reinforcing information and ideas; (7) presentation of not just one feasible route of assertion and (8) utilisation of theoretical arguments relating to the subject, substantive critical analysis and deliberate individual approach on the issue.

• Apply and Show Your Knowledge – It could appear with the least possibility that you can demonstrate all the mentioned elements in one essay; they are very high measures of quality. Nevertheless, a lot of students are not able to produce high quality essays not because they do not have enough knowledge of the topic, but the reason is that they are not able to present their legal knowledge in the best possible way.

Legal writing for law essays, law briefs and law dissertations is unique and vastly different from all other writing styles that students have previously encountered in the past. As directly opposed to creative writing for poems, short stories and novels, legal writing involves hard facts and is direct to the point. The writer has to be concise in his or her statements and avoid word fillers. Law essays should be able to clearly and concisely explain the facts and reasoning of particular cases and statutes. Then, the writer should be able to explain how these factors are connected and how they can be applied to evaluate or analyse the facts of a particular scenario. Legal writing for law essays should be able to ably compare the facts of preceding cases to the facts of a scenario being studied, spotting similarities and differences. Based on this analysis, the writer will then apply general rules from the precedent case to the current scenario under study.

In legal writing, whether it be for law essays, law briefs or law dissertations the writer is always obligated to explain every step of the analysis he or she performed. This should be the case even if it is a given that the one reading the law essay is an expert of the law and knows more facts and principles than the writer. Law essays do not serve as a reminder to the professor or lecturer of legal concepts and theories; rather, its aim is for the student to demonstrate his or her knowledge, critical thinking, analytical and writing skills.

Law essays are part of the student’s coursework requirements that serve to prepare the student for his or her future duties and responsibilities as a lawyer. Law essays teach a student with the following skills:

• how to analyse a situation from all angles,

• how to formulate strong arguments,

• how to spot and build conclusive pieces of evidence and

• how to refute or counter arguments.

In addition, the writer must present a clear and thorough explanation of cases, statutes, and other sources of authority cited in law essays. Therefore, the student has to take utmost preparations in writing his or her law essays as developing good writing skills will help determine his or her success as a full-pledged lawyer.

I decided to take up a bachelor’s degree in political science as a preparation for entering law school. I first though that the academic writings related to law such as legal essays or law essays would only start during the third up to the fourth year of my bachelor’s degree since my course major is related to law. However, I soon discovered that we would already be performing legal essay writing tasks even in our first year and it would start during the first weeks of the first academic term.

Me and the fellow students that I made friends with had started discussing with each other on how we would go about with our academic writings especially the research process and the writing procedures for the law essays we would soon be writing since our academic major is related to law. So everyone in our group read, researched, and studied everything we could about law essay writing. We found out that the process of how to answer a law essay question would be an essential part of the legal essay writing process. I found out that some of the essay writing tasks, the lecturer would sometimes assign a specific law essay question for each student and that the discussion of the topic and presentation of arguments could depend on how the essay question was answered.

Hence, we research in the library and from the Internet on how to correctly and properly answer the questions for law essays. From our research, we read and collected the basic tips for the correct and proper answering of a law essay question. I am sharing with everyone the tips that we learned so you would also know the steps on how to answer a legal essay question.

The steps are identifying the instruction in the question or what the question is specifically asking you to do. Most of the law essay questions would contain specific directives such as analyse, assess or evaluate, compare and contrast, define or describe, discuss or explain, and so on. In addition, the question could address a specific area of law so that you should have the knowledge on the area of law under the question.

The main admission requirements for majority of the law schools in the Unites States are a bachelor’s degree, a satisfactory grade point average in the applicant’s undergraduate degree, and a satisfactory score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Many law schools would require additional requirements such as admission essays or personal statements, letters of recommendation, and other application materials.

Law essays for admission to a law school or law school application is one of the application materials seriously evaluated by the law school admission committee if ever the applicant does not have a high grade point average or high score in the LSAT.

Therefore, it is important that a prospective law school student should select an interesting and effective law essay topic for his law school application because a topic that catches the attention of the admissions committee and encourages them to read the rest of the essay would impress them enough to consider the applicant’s law school application.

To select an effective and interesting law essay topic for a law school application, a prospective law school student should think of the main themes for his topic. In writing an admission essay, the main themes to consider are asking questions to yourself such as why I want to be a lawyer, why I am qualified to be a lawyer, and why I am unique from other applicants.

The possible contents for each main theme for a law essay topic:

• Why I want to be a lawyer – You should provide specific the specific reasons on why you want to pursue a career in law. You could support those reasons with any personal experiences or events in your life that influenced your decision to become a lawyer.
• Why I am qualified – If you have additional qualifications besides your bachelor’s degree, you should specifically discuss them in the essay. The other qualifications could be volunteer works, summer jobs, internships or on the job training, seminars, and other relevant activities before law school.
• Why I am unique – If you believe you have any characteristics or other personal circumstances that make you exceptional from other law school applicants, then you should specifically mention them in the admission essay.

You are now at law university or in law school; this means you can already use legal writing style – as opposed to when you are still applying and writing your law school admission essay or law personal statement.  You are even expected to do so and it will be a great plus to your law essay writing.

Legal writing style is used not only in law essay writing but also in answering law problem questions, preparing law reports and in law dissertations.  Here are some tips that will enable you to write in the legal style:

• Be Clear and Concise – Contrary to misinformed public perception, legal writing style is not flowery nor lengthy.  It is distinctively – in contrast to creative writing – factual, straightforward and does not use a lot of words to pad it.  Thus, be clear and concise.  These two adjectives complement each other as you can be clear by being concise and you can be concise by being clear.
• Legal Style – With clarity and conciseness, explain the reasoning and facts of the statutes and cases you have researched or have in your stock knowledge.  Then, demonstrate how they are relevant with one another and how they are applicable to the facts in the given case or scenario.
• Jurisprudence and Case Law – Included in the legal writing style is comparing previous cases or scenarios to the case or scenario of the essay examination or essay assignment at hand.  Use facts in doing the comparison.
• Demonstrate Legal Knowledge – Law essays should be written in step-by-step presentation or analysis.  You should explain each step even when you know your reader (law professor) has more legal knowledge than you do.  As readers, your professors are interested in your law essay writing not because they want to get knowledge but because they want to know what you “know.”