Essay Writing

The three minutes before you write

Write the thesis in one sentence at the top of the rough sheet. If you cannot, you do not yet have an essay.

Write three headings, one for each body paragraph.

Write one fact, example or figure against each heading. This is the step that separates a good essay from a page of opinion. A law student has particular material available: an Act, a decided case, a constitutional article, an incident from the prescribed texts.

Then write, and do not plan again.

A model essay: Social Media, Boon or Bane

Note. MU set this on 21 February 2026, paper 75901, for six marks.

Social Media: Boon or Bane

Fewer than twenty years separate us from a world in which a private citizen had no means of addressing a national audience. Social media removed that barrier at a stroke, and the argument about it since has been an argument about what happens when everybody can publish. Whether it is a boon or a bane is not answerable in the abstract: it depends on what is being done with it, and on whether the law has kept up.

Its benefits are real and are easiest to see where older institutions failed. It has given small businesses a market, students free instruction, and isolated people a community. In India it has carried public grievances past editors and officials who once decided which complaints deserved attention, and more than one administrative failure has been corrected because a photograph of it travelled faster than the file.

Its harms are equally real and follow from the same feature. What travels fast travels unverified, and a rumour reaches a village before a correction reaches the district. Defamation, once expensive and slow, is now free and instantaneous. Personal data has become a commodity, addressed in India by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023. The effects on adolescents, whose sense of themselves is formed by comparison, are the subject of a growing and disturbing literature.

The honest conclusion is that the medium is neither, and that the question is one of regulation and of habit. A knife is not a boon or a bane; it is a tool with a rule attached, and the rule matters more than the tool. Social media is now the place where reputation, privacy and speech collide, which is precisely why it should interest a student of law rather than merely alarm them.

(about 290 words)

Why this scores. It defines the question in the introduction and refuses the false choice. It gives one paragraph to each side. It uses two concrete Indian references. It ends with a judgment, and the last line connects the topic to the reader's own subject.

A model plan: Artificial Intelligence, a Boon or Bane for Lawyers

Not written out, because what you need in the hall is the plan.

Thesis. Artificial intelligence will remove the part of legal work that is search and drafting, and will make judgment, which is the rest of it, more valuable rather than less.

Paragraph one, the boon. Research that took a junior two days takes an hour. Discovery across ten thousand documents becomes possible. Translation and summarising open pleadings to litigants who cannot read English.

Paragraph two, the bane. Systems that invent citations, and lawyers in more than one country penalised for filing them. Confidentiality, since a client's file typed into a public system has left the office. The junior's training, which was always the drudgery now being automated.

Paragraph three, the resolution. The duty to the court is unchanged, and a lawyer is answerable for every word filed whatever produced it. The tool changes the work and not the responsibility.

Conclusion. Neither boon nor bane but a shift in what a lawyer is paid for, from knowing where the material is to knowing what it means.

A model plan: My Favourite Book

The mistake to avoid. Writing about reading in general. The topic says "my favourite book" and wants a book.

Paragraph one. The book, its author, and when you read it. One sentence on what it is about.

Paragraph two. What it does that others do not, with one specific incident or passage. This paragraph carries the essay.

Paragraph three. What it changed in you, honestly and without exaggeration.

Conclusion. Who you would give it to, and why.

And a note for this paper. Kalam's essay on this syllabus is exactly this exercise performed by its author, which is why MU sets both. The chapter on the book review is the companion to this topic.

The proposition essay, and how a law student should handle it

MU's question 4 sometimes gives a proposition rather than a subject: "The lawyer's profession is a liar's profession."

Do not simply agree or disagree. State what the proposition means, who says it, and on what evidence.

Then take the evidence from the prescribed texts, which is what the paper wants when it says "illustrate your answer with reference to the text": Gandhi records hearing the saying as a student and answers it with his own practice; Dickens supplies Dodson and Fogg and Serjeant Buzfuz, who argue what they are paid to argue; Fielding supplies Lawyer Scout, who says outright that the utmost a lawyer can do is prevent the law taking effect.

Then take the other side, which is that an advocate presents a case rather than asserts a belief, and that the duty not to mislead the court is the professional line between the two.

Then decide, and say what your test is. That is what makes it an essay rather than a list.

What loses marks

No thesis. The reader reaches the end without knowing what you think.

One side only on a two-sided topic.

Length ignored. Three pages where the paper said 150 words, or four sentences where it said 250.

No examples. Opinion with nothing under it.

Memorised material wheeled in whatever the topic. Examiners recognise it instantly.

Slogans for a conclusion. "Thus we should all work together for a better tomorrow" says nothing. Close on the judgment your paragraphs earned.

Poor handwriting and no paragraphs. An essay that is one block of text loses marks before it is read.

A worked answer

Question, February 2026, six marks. "Short Essay (Any 1): 1) Social Media: Boon or Bane. 2) My favourite Book."

The plan, ninety seconds. Choose the topic on which you have specifics, not the one that sounds grander. Write the thesis. Write three headings. Write one example against each.

The writing, twelve minutes. Introduction of four sentences ending in the thesis. Three body paragraphs, each opening with its topic sentence. Conclusion of three sentences.

The check, one minute. Does the introduction say what you argue? Does each paragraph have one idea? Does the conclusion decide something? Is the length near what was asked?

Quick revision

MU sets an essay in every scheme: 6 marks at 150 to 250 words, 10 marks in the 100 mark papers, and 13 marks as a proposition inside question 4.

Four kinds of topic: two-sided, single-subject, personal, and proposition.

Structure: introduction ending in a thesis, two to four body paragraphs each with a topic sentence, conclusion that judges rather than summarises.

Plan for three minutes: thesis, three headings, one example against each.

Two-sided topics need both sides and a resolution. Personal topics need specifics. Proposition topics need evidence from the prescribed texts.

Watch the word limit, and never close on a slogan.

Test yourself

1. What must the introduction of an essay end with? The thesis, stated in one sentence, so that the reader knows what the essay will argue before the argument begins. An examiner looks for it, and an essay without it reads as a collection of remarks.

2. How should a "boon or bane" topic be answered? By giving both sides and then resolving them. One paragraph for the benefits, one for the harms, and one that decides the question on a stated test. An answer that gives only one side has ignored half the question.

3. What is the three-minute plan? Write the thesis in one sentence, write three headings for the body paragraphs, and write one fact, example, case or incident against each heading. Then write the essay and do not plan again.

4. How does a proposition essay differ from a topic essay? A proposition, such as "the lawyer's profession is a liar's profession", must be examined rather than merely agreed with: state what it means and who says it, bring the evidence from the prescribed texts, state the case on the other side, and then decide, saying what test you are applying.

5. Give three ways candidates lose marks in the essay. By ignoring the stated length, by writing opinion with no examples under it, and by ending on a slogan instead of a judgment. Writing one unbroken block with no paragraphs and reproducing memorised material regardless of the topic are close behind.