Legal writing — Article and Case Comment, Editing of a Law Journal

Your moot partner sends you a draft that reads like a WhatsApp forward: no headings, no sources, and a judgment summarised in one breathless sentence. A law journal editor would bin it in thirty seconds. Legal writing is a craft with its own rules: what to argue, how to cite, how much of someone else's words you may use. This topic teaches the two pieces you will be asked to write in practical training, the article and the case comment, and what an editor does to them before they are printed.

In two minutes

An article argues a thesis about the law; a case comment examines one decision, its reasoning and its effect; an editor checks accuracy, originality, citation and permissions before either is published.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Practical Training – II: Alternate Dispute Resolution on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.