Structure of a Law Dissertation

In this week’s blog post, we will be looking at the structure and possible headings that your law dissertation might have, with another focusing on how to actually write it. This one is all about how to set out your dissertation, or at least give you an idea of where to start! However, there is no set way that you need to structure your dissertation – you can vary the structure outlined below in places, as long as the overall order still makes sense and is easy for your reader to follow.

One exception to this is if your university or institution has given you an outline of structure to follow, as you would obviously want to keep to their guidelines. Make sure you also look out for any specifics about what font style and size you can use.

Title

Before you start, you will want to have a title ready to start your planning. You might want to revise your title later, but it is a good idea to have something in front of you to ensure you stay on track. It should clearly state the topic your dissertation will cover, without going into too much detail. Of course, you may be given the title and need to work around it.

Abstract

The next section is the abstract. This works as an advert for your dissertation, summarising the areas that it will cover. This is where the details that you cannot fit into your title should go and the two should work together to give a complete picture of your work. The abstract is fairly short – only about 150 to 300 words depending on your total word count.

Contents

Your table of contents is exactly what it sounds like. It should list everything in your dissertation in the correct order, following whatever format is required. Your word processing software may have a function to automatically create a table of contents from the headings you have used, updating this and the page numbers as you do.

Introduction

Your introduction and conclusion form the bookends of your work, so you will need to take extra care to ensure these highlight your writing skills and help your reader to understand the rest of your dissertation. Your introduction should be about 10% of your total word count, but you might be given further guidance by your university or institution.

Methodology

The methodology section should show what research you plan to carry out and how you will do this. Firstly, explain what type of research you are doing. There are two main types – quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research focuses on collecting numerical data and interpreting this to reach your conclusion, which is not often used for a legal dissertation. It is unlikely, although not impossible, that you will be doing quantitative research, which could involve surveying people or gathering statistics from cases. If you are supposed to be carrying out quantitative research, you will be told this in your original assignment.

On the other hand, qualitative research looks at non-numerical data such as text and video to analyse. It is much more likely that you will be doing this sort of research for a legal dissertation. This will probably mean that you select a number of sources and use them to help you consider the question posed by your title. To do this, you will use both primary sources and secondary sources. Primary sources are ones that are actually made by the lawmakers, such as statutes and case law from judicial precedent. Secondary sources are ones that analyse and interpret primary sources, such as textbooks and journal articles.

Literature Review

Your literature review is where you will first introduce the bulk of your sources. You need to include all of the relevant research that has been carried out into your topic to show that you are aware of the background to your title. The literature review will include all of the recent publications in the area and relevant theory. However, not all dissertations will require a literature review. Your initial assignment might say if you do or don’t need one or you might have to judge for yourself how much background literature there is to discuss.

Discussion

The discussion section is a crucial part of your dissertation. Here, you will gather together all of your findings from the literature review and your own research and start to answer the question posed by your title. This section should focus on analysis, not description, as this is the place where you will draw your own conclusions about the research topic.

Conclusion

This section should summarise all of your findings so far and reach a conclusion based on your research. You should not introduce any new material at this stage and you need to write analytically, rather than just describing the main issues. Your conclusion should be roughly 10% of your total word count, but you may be given more detailed guidance than this in your assignment.

References

Your references section should include details of all the sources that you have used, even those you have only used for background reading rather than referencing directly. This section may also be called the reference list or the bibliography. Make sure you use the referencing system that you have been asked for, such as OSCOLA or Harvard.

Wrapping Up

I hope that this helps you to plan the structure of and start a draft for your law dissertation. In my next blog post, we will be looking at a guide to writing your dissertation, so come back in two weeks for that!

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