Freaking out about trials

[Bina]

I think I'll be fine with multiple choice and short answer
But legal essays have never been my strong point..

[fantasticbeasts3]

Hi!

No need to stress about your essays - if you're looking for some feedback on them, just put them in this thread here.

What are you unsure about when writing a Legal essay?

[Bina]

Hi!

No need to stress about your essays - if you're looking for some feedback on them, just put them in this thread here.

What are you unsure about when writing a Legal essay?

I'm just unsure how to prepare myself for my legal trial exams
I'm sure I know most of the content well enough, however when it comes to essays I don't know what I'm going to be asked exactly so it's overwhelming to figure out what legislation/cases/media articles I need
Say for example I'm doing this question
Assess the effectiveness of legal and non-legal responses in dealing with domestic violence.
How would I go about it?

[fantasticbeasts3]

I'm just unsure how to prepare myself for my legal trial exams
I'm sure I know most of the content well enough, however when it comes to essays I don't know what I'm going to be asked exactly so it's overwhelming to figure out what legislation/cases/media articles I need
Say for example I'm doing this question
Assess the effectiveness of legal and non-legal responses in dealing with domestic violence.
How would I go about it?

With Legal essays, I found the best way to prepare for them was to do a lot of essay plans with a ton of different questions (for other sections, you can do past papers). This way, it's easier to cover all bases because you're answering different questions with different examples. I also had a 'cheat sheet' for each topic (Crime, Human Rights + options) where I had all the LCMs I wanted to use on them.

I also encourage you to post a few essays on the marking board so you can get feedback from your peers and maybe the mods can check them out too. :-)

In response to the question you posted, I didn't do the Family option, but this is how I structured my responses for questions with that format:
- Introduction
- Effective legal measures
- Ineffective legal measures
- Effective non-legal measures
- Ineffective non-legal measures
- Conclusion

A thing to remember with this format is that although you may classify one measure as effective, it might have a few cons too so mention them in the same paragraph so you can show you're assessing the effectiveness of that measure. Does that make sense?

Hope this helps!

[Bina]

Thank you so much for helping me out

[griceyyy]

Usually in regards to my LCMID, I try to find legislation, cases and media articles that cover multiple aspects of my course.
So for Crime you would find a case that shows the ineffectiveness or effectiveness of a few aspects of the syllabus.

i.e. The case of Jeffrey Gilham.
The initial police response was dodgey, the investigation process was messy and the multiple sentencing procedures were ineffective.

A ton of students loose marks in the HSC by not anwsering the question, they tend to try catch people off guard by occasionally focussing on a smaller dot point such as International Crime the one year where the states average was below a pass mark as a result. Know you syllabus like the back of your hand so that any question you receive, you will automatically know which heading fall under the similar dot point and the themes and challenges that apply.

Im halfway through my trials with Legal next week ahhh. Good Luck!

[raylmao]

The most imperative aspect to writing a solid legal essay is to have a firm judgement and one that you can continuously argue throughout your essay. For instance, especially within the crime section, if you argue that a certain aspect of the legal system is effective to a large extent, then a majority of your essay should highlight the effectiveness of the legal system, with one paragraph dedicated to addressing its ineffectiveness. Remember, legal essays are not black and white.... your answer will be different to everyone else's, so it's crucial that you have your own opinions on the law,,,,

[henrychapman]

I think I'll be fine with multiple choice and short answer
But legal essays have never been my strong point..

I think you have to establish a key criteria- a lot of essay questions use "evaluate" as the key directive verb, which means make a judgement using criteria. This "criteria" can be almost the same for all essays. For example in crime, I always use fairness and equality as criteria to measure if something is effective or not. For world order, I use promoting peace and resolving conflict. Your evidence should come second to that. Documents are particularly impressive to markers because it shows you have done a bit of extra research. Particularly good to use is Nicholas Cowdrey (former DPP) and Don Weatherburn (the guy that heads up BOSCAR). Aside from this, quotes from legal professionals are also very good. If the quote from a legal professional was in a media article, learn the title of that media article and then quote what they said. This is killing two birds with one stone. Make sure you have at least 1 each of legislation, cases, media articles and documents in your essay. I got marked down for this earlier in the year
But yeh biggest tip, create a strong argument, and stick to it. Introduce a criteria by which you are going to measure effectiveness by in your introduction and then stick to it throughout your response.