Yesterday I had my legal exam and wrote what I thought was a good case but turns out I only got one name right and everything else wrong. And then you hope that the teacher doesn't realised. Anyone else done this?
It shouldnt be an issue. One of my teachers was a senior marker for Legal Studies and he told us that as long as you get the law right, they dont really care if you get the case names wrong. If you think about it, the logic makes sense - in an essay, they want to see that you know the content and can critically evaluate it, they arent interested in your ability to memorise and rattle off case names.
In my legal half yearly I was going to mention the Corey Davis case in my crime essay but I could not remember the name of case at all so I was just going to write "The case where a boy was drowned in a lake by another child" but then I decided not to because it would sound really informal. Then I told my teacher afterwards and he said I should have written that anyway because it's not a huge deal if you don't remember the case name exactly.
We were permitted to do this in closed book Law exams at uni because like Legal Studies, the markers arent interested in your ability to memorise cases (lawyers have access to law books and some are lucky enough to have paralegals and researchers, so it isnt a skill needed in the profession).
