Hello everyone! Thanks for visiting a guide that I never thought I would be qualified to write. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I would be getting a fantastic mark for HSC Legal Studies. I was aiming for Band 5, I would have been ecstatic for a low Band 6. I put in lots of work throughout the year, and studied hard, and went into the exam confident… But I never thought I’d state rank. I got 13th in the State for Legal Studies in 2014, with a mark of 98. Point being, I didn’t think Legal was up my alley. But hard work lead to success; never count yourself out. Here are my Band 6 Legal Studies Tips for the student who doesn’t think they’ll get a Band 6.
HSC Legal Studies: It’s All About LCMT
For those who don’t know, this stands for Laws, Cases, Media, Treaties.
Absolutely, knowing your content is super important. But every subject has one thing that distinguishes the Band 6 students. For sciences, it’s usually knowing the jargon. For Math, it’s the practice and experience. For Legal, it’s this stuff. Cases, laws, media, treaties. Know as many of these as you are able to remember, but it’s quality over quantity. The student who knows 10 crucial cases in detail, will probably outperform the student who knows the name and rough details of 25 random cases.
So, make sure you know the key laws and cases for each area of the course. Check all your textbooks and browse online forums and guides, do some research! Pick a handful of cases to understand, analyse and criticise. At the very least, remember the basic stuff, LCMT is what forms the evidence in your essays. It’s like remembering quotes for an English essay, super important!
A quick note on media; there are differing opinions on how it should be included. Remember the purpose of including media articles (or similar), is to portray how the legal issue in question is viewed by society and how this reflects on the legal and non legal responses. Essentially, it shows what society thinks about the issue. So, the marker will not criticise your response if the title isn’t exactly right, or the outlet is incorrect, blah blah, they just want to see that you are considering the societal response to the issue. Don’t stress about remembering titles, quotes, etc, it is perfectly fine to write things like: “Articles in major newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald are effective in promoting human rights issues to a domestic audience,” if you can’t remember details.
Watch the News!
This may sound a little stupid, but HSC markers are looking for contemporary cases and examples. The best place to find these is by watching the news, reading the newspaper, whatever you can do to keep up with the times. If something pops up that is relevant, do a bit of research and add it to your study notes. Markers love it; they hate seeing the same examples as they have every year because it is what is in the textbooks from 2010. Bring in what is relevant!
I read the news the morning of my Legal exam, and there was a story to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation approving new sanctions against North Korea. It went into my World Order essay, easy to remember since I’d read it that morning!
So, watch the news, keep up with the times! It will give you an edge in the exam for two reasons. One, it gives you more evidence to play with. Two; legal studies exams are more likely to ask questions on current issues , or frame them in a contemporary mindset. Someone asked whether I think the Legal Exam for 2015 will have some sort of question on marriage equality in there somewhere; I say YES . It is relevant and current, so very likely to be asked (perhaps in the Family Elective). So, keeping up with the news actually gives you a way to sort of, kind of, maybe, predict questions in your exam!
Study Notes
I think that, by far, the best way to structure your Legal Notes is around LCMT. That may seem strange, and you will probably want a separate section for content for the Crime module (and possibly human rights). But consider this; 75-80% of your mark comes from essay/extended response style questions. The backbone of these responses is LCMT, so it makes sense to structure study notes around them.
For my electives, I crammed all of my study notes into about 3-4 pages per module. These pages listed the important laws and treaties, summarised the vital cases, discussed relevant articles, and formulated some potential arguments. By studying these, the content came naturally! I think this is an awesome way to study, and supplemented with some extra, more traditional notes to prepare for the multiple choice, will arm you extremely well for the exam. I can’t recommend it enough.
Studying for Legal Studies
I’ve already mentioned how I think you should structure your notes. When it comes to studying for Trials and HSC, again, keep in mind the exam structure. 20-25 marks MC and short answer. 75-80 marks extended response/essay. Therefore, you should spend 80% of your time prepping for these longer sections!
The best way to do this is to practice. Try and do as many sample questions as possible, and even more importantly, get them marked! There is no point doing a practice essay without feedback, and the best feedback comes from a teacher, or even a knowledgeable peer. You can even upload a practice essay into ATAR Notes to be marked, how easy is that? The feedback will help you identify areas of improvement.
Beyond practice, you should work on learning your laws and dates. To do this, make a little deck of palm cards, the law on one side, the date on the other. Or maybe, the case on one side, the details on the other. Whatever you think best. This is also a great way to learn the types of crimes, and pretty much any legal studies terminology. There are cool apps you can download for your phone that let you set up similar games.
To learn content, the best thing is to use the syllabus. Go through each section and see if you could confidently answer a multiple choice/short answer question on it. If you can, tick! Move on, otherwise, spend some time revising. To check, do some practice MC questions.
One final thing. When you study for a subject, it is useful to keep in mind exactly what the markers are looking for. Content is a given. In Legal Studies, when your essays are marked, what the markers are looking for is critical analysis . They want you to evaluate specific responses to legal issues and make links between these responses, and how the issue is being dealt with by the system as a whole.
What does this mean? You should devote study time to formulating arguments that you can use in your essays .
Formulating Arguments in Legal Studies
Arguments in your Legal essays are the difference between a Band 5 and Band 6. It is essential that you give some thought to the sort of arguments you can make in all the different exam sections. It is absolutely better to come up with these yourself, rather than trying to copy something really complex that you don’t really understand. That said, if you need some help, don’t feel shy about utilising my free online HSC tutoring service. Open that up in a new tab and check it out when you’re done with this guide!
So how do you come up with an argument? Well, you are looking to come up with a conclusion, as to how well the legal system (including non legal responses, where necessary) is dealing with a legal issue. So, the first step is to look at each response and think, “What is it doing well?” “How could it improve?” Think strengths, and weaknesses, and evaluate each response using your LCMT as evidence.
EG- The domestic judicial system has proved an effective mechanism for protecting human rights. For example, in the case of BLAH, where BLAH happened, effectively protected human rights such as BLAH, because BLAH.
So, the case, what happened (very briefly), what was protected, and why is was effective. Use this evidence to make a judgement for each response. Group these together into an umbrella argument. The best of these have some level of complexity, rather than just saying “Everything is good” or “Everything sucks”. An example:
“Though legal responses have proved relatively effective in protecting World Order in the past, they ultimately remain overly reliant on cooperation between nation states, which will continue to prove a hindrance to true achievement of global peace and security.”
This argument says, okay, the responses are doing pretty well, but they could do better, and are rendered useless if a country chooses to be uncooperative. This is a deep argument which, successfully backed up with evidence, could be the backbone of a 20/20 essay.
So, long story short, spend some time thinking about your arguments. Read the news, talk to other students, and come up with an argument which YOU can back up.
Exam Tips
There are lots of tips I can share for doing well in the Legal Studies exam:
There is a ridiculous amount to do in three hours. Three essays, a short answer section, and a multiple choice, is a LOT. Time management is key; keep an eye on the clock, and make sure you go to the bathroom before the exam. You don’t want to miss a second.
Spend reading time looking over your essay questions. Use the 5 minutes to decide which elective question you will tackle, and begin formulating arguments for all 3 essays. Pick the essay you feel most confident writing for the electives. No question is “harder” or viewed more favourably. That’s a myth.
I recommend spending more time on the essays than you would be expected to, based on the marks. Try and do the multiple choice in 20 minutes, and the short answers in about the same amount of time. Spend forty minutes on the crime essay, and fifty minutes each on your electives. Any extra time from any section should go to electives. You want as much time as possible.
Legal is one of the HSC exams with the most writing for the given time. You want to break this up a little to avoid fatigue. So, I recommend doing the exam in the following order: Short Answer, Crime Essay, Multiple Choice, Electives . This separates the content so you aren’t jumping back and forth between core modules and electives, and gives your hand a break in the middle. It was a god sent in my HSC, and I bet you’ll love the break too.
During the short answer section, pay attention to the verb. Don’t evaluate where it only wants you to describe. Big time waster, be efficient.
Same is true for the essays; make sure you include everything they want. If they give a quote (something which happened to me, it could be the new thing ), make sure you refer to it. If they ask for specific inclusions, include them.
Like all MC, you should answer the multiple choice questions by crossing out three incorrect answers, not by picking a single correct one. This elimination approach will keep you from making silly mistakes.
Also watch out for tricks in the multiple choice. There will be a few, don’t fall for them. Think everything through carefully, underline key terms, etc
Legal Studies is an extremely accessible subject. The content is fairly easy to understand, albeit quite difficult to remember. Where you distinguish yourself is in expressing your opinion. Think of your own views on the issue in front of you. Why do you think that, based on your study? Get that onto paper in a somewhat sophisticated manner, and back it up with correct evidence, and the marks will come flying your way. Arguments and opinions are so important in Legal, so just consider the subject a chance to vent on some issues about the world that piss you off! It becomes much more enjoyable this way 
That about wraps it up for this guide! Do you have any tips for doing well? Feel free to register and share them, or of course, ask questions! All the good stuff which will prove super helpful. If you need any notes, there are detailed notes on Crime, Human Rights, and many other topics written by Band 6 students right here!
