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The Structure of Law Essays

Good Essays

I can help you get first class marks. I can show you simple ways of becoming an amazing legal author. In this document I will provide you with some key tips on writing introductions. I will help you understand why those tips are important. And I will provide you with examples to help you use those tips. If you read this document and practise writing introductions – you will be a better writer and you will get better marks.
See what I did there? See how I tried to capture your attention and get you to read on? See how you understand what to expect of this document? That’s the whole point of an introduction. Think of any great book that you have read or any great film that you have watched. The first few paragraphs or scenes are …show more content…

As Jo Hunt says, writing a law essay is not like writing a detective novel. No one wants to wait until the last line for the big reveal, to find out “whodunit”. Instead, you need to be telling your reader, in your introduction, exactly what your conclusion is going to be. As Richard Moorhead comments,
“Outside of fiction, and interestingly judicial judgments, writing should generally not be a magical mystery tour. The best writing generally tells the reader what they will learn from reading the full text and it does so very early on (in the introduction). So if the question is, Do you think capital punishment is right or wrong, you would say from the outset of the essay what your line is. Say, “I will argue that capital punishment is wrong.” Or, “I will argue that capital punishment is right for certain types of offence.””
4. Keep it short and keep it snappy. The introduction introduces. It doesn’t give everything in full detail. That’s what the body of your essay is for. So, in exam conditions where you have 45 minutes – 1 hour for an answer, you’re probably looking at no more than a couple of paragraphs. In summative work (or work in non-exam conditions), try and keep your introduction to no more than 10% of the total word count. This figure, 10%, is not a magic number. It’s just a rough guide. Be sensible. Remember that the Introduction is not

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