A quick glance at any website or online forum dedicated to law students will reveal that most students are weary of problem questions. How to read them, how to interpret them, how to answer them. This need not be so. This blog will encourage you to take legal problem questions in your stride and show you that not only can you easily address legal issues, but you can actually enjoy solving them!
A problem scenario is not an essay
The most important point to keep in mind is that a problem question tests different skills than an essay question. Perhaps you enjoyed English or Philosophy A Level and you now long to write essays demonstrating the breadth of your new legal knowledge. Unfortunately, a problem question is not the forum for this! Some students like to equate it with the “source work” questions common to subjects like History and Politics.
The topic and issues you need to discuss are all there in the scenario in front of you. For any budding legal practitioners, this is exciting as it replicates the process involved in advising a real-life client. A client does not wish to know the former legal test and when it was overruled, for example, or the academic commentary on the merits of a particular piece of legislation. They want to know what the law is now and how it will apply to them. Being concise and succinct in your writing is key.
Read the question fully and plan, plan, plan
To end up with concise and succinct writing, planning is key. When confronted with a long and detailed scenario, you may feel overwhelmed. If there are several parties in the scenario, start by writing their names on a page. Who is the claimant? Who is the defendant? Who is the victim? Identifying the parties will engage the logical part of your brain, allowing you to allocate legal issues to each person as you come across them.
Pay attention to the question you are asked at the bottom of the scenario. Is it a wide-ranging, ‘discuss the potential liability of X’ question, or are you asked to focus on particular individuals or issues? This will help you to sort out the relevant information from the irrelevant details as you re-read the scenario.
IRAC
Any textbook or resource on tackling problem questions will mention a technique. Whilst you may come across various acronyms, QUB’s recommended form is IRAC – which stands for Issue, Rule(s), Application and Conclusion. This is a helpful tool that you should memorise and employ regularly. It will ensure that your answer covers all the relevant grounds and that you don’t waste time on irrelevant commentary.
Think of IRAC as a cycle which you need to perform constantly throughout your answer and not as an overall structure. Ideally, you should perform the cycle in every paragraph to address the issues and sub-issues that you see arise.
- Issues
In practice, identifying the issues is the first, and most important step. Failing to notice a key legal issue means that you cannot apply IRAC, and you could lose out on important marks.
After your initial read-through of the problem scenario, read it again, more slowly, and with greater attention. Take it line by line. It may be the case that you already know the broad area of law that your scenario deals with (for example, murder in Criminal Law). Perhaps the scenario closely mirrors the facts of case law you have read, and you already know specifically what aspect of the law on murder is being tested (actus reus – causation).
However, you need to sift through the information given and ask, ‘why have I been told this?’ Some information may be provided to make the scenario more readable, so you need to think: ‘what is the legal significance of this fact in the context of the question?’
Once you identify the legal issues, sub-issues may naturally present themselves. Sub-issues are normally the factual aspects that need to be satisfied to meet a particular legal test.
- Rules
Now you know what legal issues are at stake, you need to locate the legal rules which govern these issues. This could be common law or legislation. Be specific, quoting all relevant subsections and precedents. Remember, with common law definitions, you are looking for the ratio decidendi(the principle) of a particular case. A lengthy discussion of previous cases’ facts will often be irrelevant.
- Application
This is where you get the chance to shine and show your skill at applying the law to the facts. Depending on your scenario, you will be aiming to show how the requirements of the law either are or aren’t satisfied.
Avoid re-stating the law in large chunks or quoting large sections of the scenario. Keep it relevant to the ultimate question, e.g., whether there is any criminal liability or civil redress.
- Conclusion
You will be required to come to a conclusion on each of the separate issues and sub-issues. If you have identified the issue, cited the relevant legal test, and applied it to the facts of your question, you should be able to conclude whether the person in your scenario meets the relevant definition.
‘It depends’ conclusion
You may encounter a legal test where the definition is fact-specific, but you simply don’t have enough facts to allow you to come to a conclusion. Don’t panic! Recognising that you don’t have enough information is a sign of mature thinking. You should state what exact information you need to come to a definitive conclusion. You could also say that ‘if X were true, then Adam would almost certainly be found liable’ for example, or ‘if not true, a court would likely find…’
Conclude Again
If you have applied IRAC in every paragraph throughout your answer, you will have multiple conclusions throughout. Your overall conclusion should tie these various strands together, re-iterating the conclusions you’ve drawn. Be consistent! Think again of advising a real-life client. They are about to leave your meeting, what key points should you reinforce to them before they go?
Further reading:
Geraint Brown, Problem Questions for Law Students: A Study Guide (Routledge 2021)
Steve Foster, Legal Writing Skills: A guide to writing essays and answering problem questions (Pearson 2019)
Emily Finch and Stefan Fafinsli, Legal Skills (OUP 2019)
SI Strong, How to Write Law Essays & Exams (OUP 2018)