STEP 1: Recognise the type of question asked

The first thing you need to do is just recognise the type of question asked. Now, if you are in your first year of law school this will be very hard. If you are in further years, you might already have some idea of how you can recognise the type of question asked. The two basic types of law essay questions are: essay-style question and problem-style question.

Essay-style questions
An essay-style question is usually a sentence that you are asked to comment on, a proper question with a question mark or a quotation that you are asked to provide an opinion on. In order to answer this type of question you need to learn how to evaluate the law, that is to discuss its pros, cons and complexities. There are three key types of essay-style questions, each of which requires a different answer: a general essay question, a specific essay question or a quotation essay question.

In general essay questions, you are asked to evaluate a particular area of law, but no particular issues within that area are pointed out as the focus of your essay. Specific essay questions ask you to identify a particular area of law and tell you which issue within that area you should focus on. Quotation essay questions ask you to comment on a quote presenting an opinion about an area of law or an issue within that area. If you want to learn more about how to approach each of those types of questions, check out my 1st Class Law Essay Writing Course.

Problem-style questions
A problem-style question is a scenario that describes certain circumstances. Sometimes it refers to something that happened to one person, and other times there are several people involved in the scenario to whom different things happened. Problem-style questions are very different from essay-style questions, which is why they require a different approach when answering them.

In a problem-style scenario, you first need to understand how many legal issues there are. In other words, how many of the things mentioned in the scenario actually require a legal response? Let’s say you are dealing with a criminal law scenario in which somebody was shot while they were wearing a red coat. The fact that they were wearing a red coat has nothing to do with the law. But how exactly they were shot and what the shooter was thinking when they fired the gun are all relevant legal questions. You will need to consider them to assess whether the shooter will be convicted of murder.

STEP 2: Pick the relevant cases & statute sections

The next thing you need to do in order to answer a law essay question is pick the relevant cases and statute sections to be included in your essay. I know this seems very simple and straightforward at first. But that is where most students get stuck. That's because in order to select the relevant cases and statutes for your essay you need to first answer several important questions:

• What are the most important things about this topic?
• Which cases and statute sections are currently applicable to this area of law?
• Which cases and statute sections are outdated and no longer applicable?
• How many cases should I include?
• How many statute sections should I include?

There are a few common mistakes when picking the relevant cases and statute sections. Some students don't put enough cases and statute sections and some put the right number of cases and statute sections, but these are not really relevant to the topic. Still others put too many cases and statute sections in their essays because they just try to pepper their essays with legal resources in the hope of getting a higher grade.

But to write a good answer to a law essay question you have to include the exact right amount of statute sections and cases for every single part of your essay. And this is something that's very hard to decide on your own. I explain this thoroughly in my First Class Essay Writing Course, so feel free to check it out if you feel like that’s an area you are struggling with.

STEP 3: Choose the right structure

The next step to answering law essay questions is choosing the right structure for your essay. Honestly, I can't emphasise enough how important it is that your essay has the right structure. But when you're just starting law school, it is very difficult for you to know what structure your essay should have. This includes, for example, how many headings you should include in the essay, how you should structure each section of your essay, how to write an Introduction and a Conclusion to your essay, and what each section within the Main body of your essay should contain.

This is knowledge that - I believe - you should be given by universities at the beginning of your studies, so that you can do very well in your assessments. Unfortunately, law lecturers are quite busy people and they don't really have time to train you on how to answer law essay questions. While I wish I could tell you exactly how to structure all essays throughout your degree right here in this article, this is a bit of a long discussion. Instead, I have created a fantastic tool that automatically sets the structure of your essay for you, regardless of whether you are working on an essay-style question or a problem-style question. I call this tool the Essay Generator.

Depending on your essay word count and style, the Essay Generator gives you a set of questions to answer and then puts the essay together for you with the correct structure. It also ensures that you have included the right number of cases, statute sections and journal articles in your essay, and that there is a consistent argument throughout it. So it basically solves the essay structure problem for you!

STEP 4: Use the right format and style

The final thing you need to think about when answering law essay questions is the right format and style. I am referring here to something called "legal academic writing style". Unfortunately, throughout your degree nobody will really explain in detail the key aspects of this style, such as what phrases you should use in different parts of your essay to make the essay sound a lot more like legal academic writing.

At the end of the day, law essays are very different from any essays you wrote in high school or when studying for another degree. Now, it would be impossible for me to explain to you how to use the legal academic writing style in this article. But I have covered it in detail in my 1st Class Law Essay Writing Course, so feel free to check it out.

For now, I will just tell you that to properly use the legal academic writing style there are specific phrases that you should use in the Introduction, the Conclusion, and the Main body of your essay. You can typically find those phrases in journal articles if you look hard enough. But if you don’t want to do the work yourself and instead want some easy-to-follow, step-by-step guidance, then feel free to check out my course.