7.1 Introduction

This chapter provides some guidance on writing essays in law school. Most law students will have become familiar with writing essays during their secondary education, or as part of a University course in a different discipline. However, there can be important differences between the essays you wrote in other contexts and the type of essays required at law school. For a start, different academic disciplines will have different expectations and standards – or ‘conventions’ – regarding what an essay must do or be. Moreover, because law is itself a somewhat inter- or multi-disciplinary field, during your law course you will encounter different views on what an essay involves.

Perhaps the most important common point about academic essays is that they are persuasive (or critical or argumentative) pieces of writing. That is, an essay presents arguments or reasons in support of a position on some issue or a solution to a problem. In doing so, the essay seeks to persuade the reader to accept that position or solution, or at least to take the position or solution as a serious candidate in the relevant debate. This means that there are some core aspects to essay writing:

• What is the issue, problem or question posed?
• What is your position on that issue, or your solution to that problem, or your answer to that question?
• Why should your reader accept your position, solution or answer? What reasons can you give your reader to adopt your view? That is, what is your argument?

We shall examine these aspects of essay writing (and a couple more) below.

This chapter’s structure is based on the four basic stages of essay writing:

• preparing the ground, which involves interpreting the question and planning your answer
• gathering the materials, which involves gathering relevant information and views, in order to build a solid essay
• constructing your essay, which involves presenting the content of your essay in a way that achieves its purpose
• tidying up, which involves revising and editing your draft before submission.