Law Assignment Help

This page covers what Law assignments actually require in UK universities: the assessment formats departments set, the referencing convention the discipline uses, and the specific ways students in this subject lose marks. It is written for Law rather than adapted from generic study advice, because the differences between disciplines are what decide the grade.

How Law assignments are assessed

These are the formats Law departments set most often. Each is marked differently, and answering one in the shape of another is a common and costly error.

Referencing in Law

Law uses OSCOLA. OSCOLA uses footnotes rather than in-text citation, and has exact formats for cases, statutes, statutory instruments and EU material. Case names are italicised, neutral citations come before law report citations, and there is no full stop at the end of a footnote unless it ends a sentence. Most referencing generators do not produce correct OSCOLA.

A full citation audit, checking every in-text citation against the reference list and correcting style errors, is £39. It is worth it in disciplines where referencing accuracy is explicitly weighted in the rubric, which includes this one.

Where marks are lost in Law

These are the failures we see most often in Law drafts. None of them are about writing ability, which is why working harder on a draft that has one of these problems rarely moves the mark.

• Describing instead of applying. Three paragraphs setting out the law on duty of care, then one sentence saying the defendant probably owed one. The application is where the marks are.
• Citing textbooks as authority. A textbook is secondary. The authority for a proposition of law is the case or the statute, and it must be cited directly.
• Ignoring the counter-argument. Strong answers argue both sides of a genuinely arguable point before concluding. A one-sided answer to a deliberately balanced problem reads as a missed issue.
• Getting OSCOLA wrong. Referencing is explicitly marked in most law schools, and generator-produced citations are usually incorrect.
• Missing the jurisdiction. Citing Scottish or Commonwealth authority in an English law problem without flagging it as persuasive rather than binding.

A worked example

What strong Law work looks like

The gap between a 2:1 and a first in this subject is consistent enough to list. These are the characteristics that separate them.

• Every proposition of law is supported by primary authority, cited in correct OSCOLA
• The application section is longer than the rule section
• Genuinely arguable points are argued both ways before a conclusion is reached
• Academic commentary is engaged with critically rather than cited in agreement
• Where the law is unsettled, the answer says so and reasons about the likely outcome

What UK Law departments expect

UK law schools mark referencing and authority far more strictly than most other disciplines, and OSCOLA errors are treated as substantive rather than cosmetic. Word limits are also enforced tightly, and footnotes usually count towards them, which catches students who use footnotes for additional argument. Most departments publish a list of permitted abbreviations for law reports, and using an unlisted one is a small but avoidable deduction. Where a module covers post-Brexit retained EU law, check which version of a provision applies at the date of the facts, because assignments are frequently set on transitional periods deliberately.

None of this replaces your own module handbook and rubric, which are set at department level and vary between institutions. Where they disagree with anything here, follow them. If you send them with your draft we will work to them specifically rather than to the general convention.

Topics we cover in Law

We work across the standard UK Law curriculum. If your topic is highly specialised, ask before ordering and we will tell you honestly whether we have the right person rather than taking the work regardless.

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