Hi Elyse !
How should I structure a band 6 legal essay?
Hey Nadine! I'll firstly link you to Jamon's guide on
how to write a legal thesis! That'll point you in the right direction seeing as the thesis will be the foundation of the argument...which will give you your structure! Not to inundate you with links, but Jamon also wrote a really good guide on how to get a
band 6 in Legal and it also has a lot of great tips for essays, in case I don't cover it all!
There's many, many ways to structure a Legal essay. Typically, they are asking you to be evaluative of something - a process, an outcome, measures...etc. First and foremost, you need to actually make that evaluation and make it carefully. Do you think something is completely and totally effective? Probably not. It's more likely that you're able to find a few flaws in an otherwise great system, or vice versa. This makes a rich argument!
You can go about your body paragraphs mannnny ways. So, you could do it as though a case is an example of each different point. One case per paragraph. So, you might be talking about young offenders, and have a paragraph on a case that proves some kind of point about doli incapax, and then a factual case about rehabilitation stats, etc. This isn't a common structure but I did see it once on the forums and thought it was clever. Otherwise, you can bring up one idea/measure per paragraph. So, if they are talking about young offenders, one paragraph could be supporting the idea of doli incapax, whether you're arguing it is too high or too low, and then another paragraph could be about sentencing and punishment for juveniles. So you kind of just pick and choose and jump all over the syllabus, which is fine too! As long as you have some structure, of course. Always have an argument to bring it back to.
As often as is appropriate, look to use case studies, facts, media. These will make the bulk of your response in lots of ways if you're correctly connecting it to your argument. If you have a particular essay question handy that you're needing to answer, feel free to post it and the way you're thinking of structuring it and we can give feedback