Academic English and Argumentative Writing for Law and Economics
This domain tests whether your written answers argue rather than describe: whether a thesis is identifiable, claims are evidenced, counterarguments are met, and legal-economic vocabulary is used precisely.
Structure and argument
State a contestable thesis in the introduction and announce the route. Each paragraph should carry one claim, support it with authority (treaty article, case, statute, empirical study, model), and explain the inference rather than leaving it to the reader. The strongest essays include the best counterargument and rebut it - for example, conceding that legal-origin findings are correlational while maintaining that transplant evidence supports institutional adaptation. Conclude by answering the question asked, not by summarising.
Precision of claim type
Separate positive claims (what is) from normative claims (what ought to be). "Regulation reduces entry" and "regulation should be curtailed" require different evidence and neither follows from the other. Hedge with calibrated verbs - "suggests", "is consistent with", "implies under the assumption that" - and avoid "obviously", "everyone agrees", "clearly" as substitutes for reasons. Define contested terms (efficiency, dominance, causality) on first use.
Legal-academic register
Use IRAC (issue, rule, application, conclusion) for problem questions and a claim–evidence–warrant sequence for essays. Nominalisation, signposting ("however", "by contrast", "therefore") and consistent citation conventions make an argument legible. Avoid rhetorical questions, second person and unsupported superlatives. Watch for fallacies: straw man, false dilemma, begging the question, ad hominem, and post hoc reasoning.
Worked example
Weak: "Coase shows that law does not matter, so regulation is pointless." Revised: "Coase's invariance result holds only under zero transaction costs; where bargaining costs exceed the gains from trade, as with the 50 versus 40 figures above, the initial entitlement determines the outcome, so the choice between a property rule and a liability rule becomes efficiency-relevant." The revision names the assumption, supplies a condition, and draws a bounded normative implication.
Traps
Describing a theory without applying it to the question earns little. Over-hedging ("it could perhaps be argued that it might possibly") signals uncertainty rather than care. Long, clause-stacked sentences obscure the claim. Citing an authority without explaining what it establishes fails the warrant test. Do not answer a normative question with empirical evidence alone.