Take our quiz to find out what your revision personality is! >>

A-level law exam questions and structuring

I have no clue on how to structure my exam questions, particularly scenario questions like 'rights and remedies for __' or 'is __ liable?'. I struggle without clear structuring and an outline to follow so if anyone has any advice that would be great :smile:

Reply 1

cephalothin

I use the IDEA structure, and that's worked fine for me.

I - Identify the legal issue
D - Define the legal issue
E - Explain the law
A - Apply the law

It becomes pretty intuitive with practice. At the beginning, you want to identify what the crime, tort, or contract issue is. These usually open like so:

Fran may be liable for the murder of Adam...
Fran may have a claim against Adam under negligent misstatement...
Fran may have a claim against Adam under misrepresentation...

Murder is defined as...
Negligent misstatement is where...
Misrepresentation is...

Half of your marks come from explaining the law, and the other half from applying the scenario, so it has to be nearly equally weighted.

Your answer would look something like this.

I - Fran may be liable for the murder of Adam.
D - Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.
E - Firstly, it must be established that the defendant was the factual and legal cause of the victim's death. For factual causation, the 'but for' test is used, which asks: 'but for the defendant's actions, would the result have happened anyway?' (objective test)
A - But for Fran 'grabbing' Adam 'roughly', 'pinning him to the ground and stabbing him repeatedly', Adam would not have died. Fran is the factual cause.
E...
A...
E...
A...

And then you'd continue to explain and apply with this pattern until you reach your conclusion. Hope this helps. :smile:

(edited 10 months ago)