Twenty problems, four hours, each worth 5% of the subject. That arithmetic — twelve minutes a problem — is the single most useful fact about the paper, because it tells you what your answer is competing against: not a perfect answer, but a marker with a rubric and a stack of scripts.
This article is about writing for that rubric. It assumes you know the law in question; the problem it addresses is the one that costs candidates marks they had already earned.
Why a correct answer can score badly
Imagine a candidate who knows the doctrine exactly. They write four paragraphs. They restate the facts at length, because the facts are interesting. They state the rule in general terms. They discuss two possible views. They end with "therefore, the outcome will depend on the appreciation of the evidence."
Every sentence is true. Almost none of it can be marked.
A rubric asks three questions of a script: did the candidate identify the issue, state the governing rule, and apply it to these facts to reach a conclusion? An answer that contains all three scores. An answer that contains them in an order a marker must reconstruct — or that leaves the third out — scores less, and the candidate never learns what happened.
The structure that works
There are several mnemonics in circulation. They are all describing the same four moves. Learn the moves, not the mnemonic.
- Answer first. One sentence: the person is liable / the contract is void / the motion should be denied. Do not build suspense; the marker is not a reader of mysteries.
- State the rule. The provision, if there is one, with its elements. "Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Revised Penal Code: criminal liability attaches to a person who commits a felony, and the wrong done is different from what he intended." Not "under the penal laws, mistake can be complex." Prefer the specific to the general.
- Apply to these facts. Named facts, named people. "X fired at Y but the bullet struck Z." This is where most marks are won and lost.
- Conclude, briefly. Restate the answer, and add the consequence the question asked about — the crime, the remedy, the amount, the next step.
That is a paragraph and a half. On a twelve-minute budget you have room for three times that. Use the room for more of the same, not for a different kind of writing.
The same problem, written badly and well
Take a question of the kind the criminal law paper has asked for years: X, intending to kill Y, fired a shot at Y in a crowded room, missed, and hit Z, killing him.
An answer that scores badly reads:
The issue here is whether X is liable. Under the law, a person who commits a crime is liable. There are many kinds of circumstances under criminal law, including mistake in identity and mistake in the blow. X intended to kill Y, but because of what happened, Z was killed instead. Hence, X may be liable under the law for whatever crime the court may appreciate in the circumstances.
An answer that scores well reads:
X is liable for the death of Z under Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Revised Penal Code — the wrong done is different from what was intended. The provision makes a person criminally liable for a felony he commits even if the resulting injury is different from what he intended, so long as the means he used were unlawful. X used means by which he intended to kill a person. The bullet he fired at Y struck Z, and Z died. That Z rather than Y was killed does not excuse the act: the wound was inflicted by X's unlawful means, in the same act. X is therefore liable for Z's death as the direct consequence of the act he intended to commit.
Both candidates know the same thing. Only the second is markable in one reading.
Show the rule's furniture
A rule with elements or requisites is where easy marks live, because elements can be counted.
Three habits:
- Name the elements explicitly. "For the doctrine to apply, four things must concur: (1)…; (2)…; (3)…; (4)…."
- Then walk them one by one against the facts. "The first is present — X admitted the act. The second is not: Y had already left the room."
- Say plainly when an element is missing, and what follows. A negative answer done in three lines is a complete answer.
If a problem has three questions in one paragraph, answer all three, in the order asked, and number your answers. Markers find numbered answers faster and give them credit for completeness because the completeness is visible.
Ambiguity: address it, don't hide in it
Real questions sometimes have two plausible readings. The weak move is silence or "it depends". The strong move is to name the fork and choose:
If the period had been fixed for the debtor's benefit alone, the answer would be that the creditor may not demand substitution. The facts show otherwise: the period was fixed at the insistence of the creditor, and its lapse lets him demand performance. The answer is that X may demand performance now.
That paragraph earns marks in a way that a hedge never does, because it shows the examiner that you know the doctrine, the test for distinguishing, and the direction each reading gives.
What to cut
On a twelve-minute budget, these are luxuries:
- Restating the facts. Refer to them; do not retell them. One clause is enough: "X, who had fired at Y".
- A definitional tour before the issue. Nobody is asking what a contract is.
- Statutory history unless the question turns on it.
- The unnecessary exception. If the exception is not in play, one clause saying so is better than a paragraph exploring it.
- Length for its own sake. Extra marks come from extra applied content, never from extra paper.
Answering the format the paper actually uses
The 2027 Examinations are administered electronically, in six sittings, twenty essay problems per subject, each worth 5%, with a weighted general average of 75% to pass. Two consequences for how you write:
- Typing is not handwriting. You can edit; use that. But you can also lose a paragraph to a stray tab, and the platform's text box is not a word processor. Practise writing answers in a plain box, with no formatting, as preparation for the real thing.
- The paper is long and even. Twenty small problems reward a consistent, repeatable answer shape far more than twenty different attempts to impress.
Read the examination's own instructions for your year before the sitting. They are short, they are issued by the Supreme Court, and they govern format and platform rather than content — which is exactly why candidates skip them and then are surprised by a rule on the day.
A twelve-minute shape, in practice
| Minute | What you are doing |
|---|---|
| 0–1 | Read the question twice. Underline who wants what. Count how many things are asked. |
| 1–2 | Write the answer sentence at the top. Commit. |
| 2–5 | Write the rule and its elements, precisely. |
| 5–10 | Apply element by element, naming facts. |
| 10–11 | Conclusion with the consequence asked for. |
| 11–12 | Check: every question answered? numbers named? conclusion present? |
The last minute is not optional. Candidates lose whole sub-questions to a question with two parts where only one was answered — and per the 2027 Bulletin, a two-question problem carries the combined weight of 5%, so skipping one of the two is skipping half the marks on offer. That mistake never shows up in practice until it is scored.
Practising this is the whole point
You cannot read your way into an automatic format. Write the same answer shape ten times to ten different questions in one subject, and it stops being a technique and becomes how you think. Then do the same in a second subject. By the third, the shape is free and all your attention goes to the law.
The past-question method explains how to choose the questions, and the four-hour sitting explains the clock that this shape has to fit inside.
One last warning. A structure never rescues an empty answer: twelve minutes of clean format around a rule you have misremembered still fails. The structure exists so that what you do know reaches the page — which is why the work of the year, per the study method, is retrieval and application, not formatting.