legal studies essay plans (1 Viewer)

[lolzlolz]

how do people make essay plans?

 

[goblinslayer]

Should we make essay plans or pre-prepared paragraphs?

 

[sappho22]

im currently doing pretty well in legal (ranked first at a top 20 selective school) and i think doing essay plans is better than paragraphs overall, but like write a bunch of practice essays, that'll help you figure out what LCMD you need to memorise. here's an example of one of my practice plans before an exam:

To what extent do criminal processes and institutions address issues of compliance and noncompliance?
Para 1: Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Investigative Detention) Act 2016 (NSW)

• Addresses non-compliance through ‘investigative detention’, ensures crime is not committed BUT is extremely unfair and conflicts with basic tenets of the justice system by detaining people who have not committed crime.
• Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Investigative Detention) Act 2016 allows police to detain people without conviction for up to 14 days. President of NSW Council for Civil Liberties claims this conflicts with the separation of powers “The police, when they deprive individuals of their liberty, do so under the supervision of an independent arm of government - that is the judiciary”
• NSW Law Society: "To keep people in jail after they have served their sentence goes against the basic principle that we should only be punished for things we have done, not things we might do in the future."

Para 2: Smth smth Young Offenders

• Young Offenders Act 1977 - diversionary methods of dealing with crime, emphasis on rehabilitation
• Children's Court Act - where possible a child must continue living at home as normal, where possible a child must be allowed to continue their education as normal
• BOCSAR report , reoffending rates for young people are as high as 86%, whereas adult recidivism rates are 50%, exemplifying how the criminal justice system is not adequately meeting the needs of youth and the impacts of imprisonment at a young age
• Royal Australasian College of Physicians: Young children with problematic behaviour, and their families, need appropriate healthcare and protection. Involvement in the youth justice system is not an appropriate response to problematic behaviour.

Para 3: Police compliance

• Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 - outlines police powers
• Strip searching
  • NSW police strip-searched 96 children in past year, some as young as 11 (The Guardian, 2020) new data reveals 21% of those searches were performed on Indigenous children
    • “It is unjust, it violates children’s rights, and it undermines the relationship that police have with children.” Chief Executive, ALS
• Inquiry into NSW Police Force strip search practices - LECC 2020
  • Made 25 recommendations, mostly ensuring that definitions of a strip search were clear to officers and to tighten regulations surrounding appropriate justification for a strip search.
    • For example, “general intelligence about drug use" at previous events were "not by itself sufficient to justify” strip search
  • Police accountability solicitor said LECC report was important as unlawful strip searches cause serious trauma, amount to sexual assault (ABC News 2020)
  • Removed quotas and targets for searches

and these are sort of like pre-made paragraphs now that i can apply to different questions! in an exam i basically see the question and then reach into my brain and pull out different cases, reform etc thats relevant.

 

[lolzlolz]

im currently doing pretty well in legal (ranked first at a top 20 selective school) and i think doing essay plans is better than paragraphs overall, but like write a bunch of practice essays, that'll help you figure out what LCMD you need to memorise. here's an example of one of my practice plans before an exam:

To what extent do criminal processes and institutions address issues of compliance and noncompliance?
Para 1: Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Investigative Detention) Act 2016 (NSW)

• Addresses non-compliance through ‘investigative detention’, ensures crime is not committed BUT is extremely unfair and conflicts with basic tenets of the justice system by detaining people who have not committed crime.
• Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Investigative Detention) Act 2016 allows police to detain people without conviction for up to 14 days. President of NSW Council for Civil Liberties claims this conflicts with the separation of powers “The police, when they deprive individuals of their liberty, do so under the supervision of an independent arm of government - that is the judiciary”
• NSW Law Society: "To keep people in jail after they have served their sentence goes against the basic principle that we should only be punished for things we have done, not things we might do in the future."

Para 2: Smth smth Young Offenders

• Young Offenders Act 1977 - diversionary methods of dealing with crime, emphasis on rehabilitation
• Children's Court Act - where possible a child must continue living at home as normal, where possible a child must be allowed to continue their education as normal
• BOCSAR report , reoffending rates for young people are as high as 86%, whereas adult recidivism rates are 50%, exemplifying how the criminal justice system is not adequately meeting the needs of youth and the impacts of imprisonment at a young age
• Royal Australasian College of Physicians: Young children with problematic behaviour, and their families, need appropriate healthcare and protection. Involvement in the youth justice system is not an appropriate response to problematic behaviour.

Para 3: Police compliance

• Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 - outlines police powers
• Strip searching
  • NSW police strip-searched 96 children in past year, some as young as 11 (The Guardian, 2020) new data reveals 21% of those searches were performed on Indigenous children
    • “It is unjust, it violates children’s rights, and it undermines the relationship that police have with children.” Chief Executive, ALS
• Inquiry into NSW Police Force strip search practices - LECC 2020
  • Made 25 recommendations, mostly ensuring that definitions of a strip search were clear to officers and to tighten regulations surrounding appropriate justification for a strip search.
    • For example, “general intelligence about drug use" at previous events were "not by itself sufficient to justify” strip search
  • Police accountability solicitor said LECC report was important as unlawful strip searches cause serious trauma, amount to sexual assault (ABC News 2020)
  • Removed quotas and targets for searches

and these are sort of like pre-made paragraphs now that i can apply to different questions! in an exam i basically see the question and then reach into my brain and pull out different cases, reform etc thats relevant.

but what if they ask about a specific subtopic (eg. crimminal trial process) with a theme and challenge. so do u make specific essay plans for all the themes and challenges?

 

[sappho22]

but what if they ask about a specific subtopic (eg. crimminal trial process) with a theme and challenge. so do u make specific essay plans for all the themes and challenges?

familiarise yourself with LCMD that can fit like all the challenges and try to get some that fit multiple subtopics. you can do this while basically formulating as many essay plans as possible. for example like R v Lazarus you can apply to the nature of crime and criminal trial process and then under those you can make it work for law reform, discretion, the needs of victim, offender, society, achieving justice etc.

 

[NeoToad]

Brainstorm all of your ideas on a piece of paper. then you can start to organize them into paragraphs. each paragraph should have a main idea, and each main idea should support the overall thesis of the essay. btw, each paragraph should include evidence to support the main idea. so, once you have a rough outline of your essay, you can start to fill in the details.

This way helps me to be sure that all of my ideas are properly supported.