The Simple Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Research Essays

A research essay is one of the most common types of assessment you will come across in law school. This type of assessment will unavoidably account for significant percentages of your grades in some crucial subjects, and will comprise your entire assessment if you decide to take on an Honours or Masters thesis.

As always, Simple Law has your back. The below is a step-by-step guide for writing research essays, which will give you a framework for organising your thoughts and putting together a solid research essay every time.

This article is the first part of Simple Law’s series of articles on research essay writing, the subsequent parts of which deep-dive into more specific parts of the writing process. The series is made up of the following:

1. The Simple Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Research Essays (this Article);
2. Simple Guide to Legal Research;
3. Structuring Research Essays (coming soon);
4. Simple Guide to Introductions and Conclusions (coming soon);
5. Simple Rules for Writing Clearly and Effectively (coming soon).

Key Points

The research essay writing process is made up of three key phases.

1.  First, the Research phase is all about collecting your sources, filing and analysing them.

2.  Second, the Writing phase involves brainstorming your original ideas, designing your structure and crafting the writing.

3.  Third, the Editing phase is about ensuring your writing is accurate, organised, effective and original.

Research phase 

1.     Hunting and Gathering

This first phase is a free pass to explore the topic, and gather as much information as possible. During this phase, consult all of your sources freely and gather all of the information that you think you might need, without spending too much time analysing or filing. This is the time to consult the Simple Guide to Legal Research.

2.     Filing and categorising

Once you have your raw sources ready, analyse the credibility of each source, and make sure they are all by credible authors and from legitimate publications. Then, make sure you save/print them in a way that ensures you will be able to find them at a moment’s notice during the writing process. Here, you can consult our Article How to Manage Documents in Law School.

When I was writing my thesis, I went through a process of naming all of the sources with names I would remember, and in the end printed all of the key articles and filed them in lever-arch folders in preparation for the Analysing stage.

3.     Analysing

Once your sources are all organised and saved in a way you are comfortable with, it is time to figure out what they all stand for. It is time to read, understand and cross-check between the sources. Look for threads and patterns that arise, and identify the arguments and counter-arguments that are identified. In short, assess each piece of evidence and form some preliminary views about which way the weight of the evidence is leaning.

Writing phase

1.     Brainstorming

This is where you generate your own ideas, taking into account what you have learned from the established research. Think about what you can add – and come up with your own original claim, proposition or thesis.

This process can be as messy and free as you like it to be. My go-to tactic was to use an A3 piece of paper and write down all of the concepts I have learned from the research. I would then group them together, identify the gaps, and fill those gaps with my own original ideas. Others prefer tactics such as freewriting or mind mapping.

This is one of the most important stages of the process. This is where you will decide the direction of your research piece and make decisions about what you can add to the already established research. Without an original claim or proposition, the research piece loses any effectiveness.

2.     Designing

At this point, you will need to try to bring your plan together. This is where you take a step back, look at the big picture and create a structure for your research piece.

Here, consult our guide to Structuring Research Essays.

You will need to identify the main parts of the piece, the subparts and subheadings, the flow of the article and the main areas that your article will cover. Here, you should also come up with the content of your Introduction and Conclusion. To do this effectively, consult our Simple Guide to Introductions and Conclusions.

3.     Crafting

This is the main writing phase. Turn your structure into a free-flowing piece of writing and craft each section into coherent sentences and paragraphs.

Focus on the tone, style and attitude of your writing. You need to come up with an engaging voice, which will get your ideas across throughout the article and support your main research thesis/original idea.

Ensure that each paragraph has a strong topic sentence, and that the last sentence of the last paragraph of each Part is strong and conclusive.

The key here is to make your writing as clear and concise as possible, and ensure that it gets your ideas across. To do this, follow the Simple Rules for Writing Clearly and Effectively.

Editing phase

1.     Factchecking

Once your draft is completed, the first editing phase is to check for accuracy. Analyse the factual accuracy of your statements, their legal accuracy and the general substance of the article. Ensure your references are properly recorded in accordance with the AGLC throughout the article.

2.     Organising

Here, take a step back check for the organisation and flow of the article as a whole. Does each part and sub-part flow into the next logically?

3.     Beautifying

Next, read solely for style and elegance. Make sure your sentences and paragraphs are well crafted and read well. Make sure each paragraph has a topic sentence. Minimise ‘legalese’ as much as possible and use plain English. Check for clarity and conciseness, and minimise the use of block quotes.

4.     Proofreading

Time for attention to detail. Check for typos and spelling errors. Again, check all of your references and make sure you are AGLC compliant.

5.     Integrity check

Finally, check for the integrity of your writing. Is your original claim truly original? Make sure you are not plagiarising any ideas. As all law students would know, plagiarism can impact not only your university grades, but also your admission to the legal profession.

That’s it – the writing of essays broken down into 11 Simple phases. We hope this helps.

A number of the ideas in this article are based on the teachings of the brilliant Professor Julia Davis.