Answering Problem Questions

What a problem question actually asks of you

A problem question hands you a scenario, usually a small disaster involving several people behaving badly or carelessly, and asks you to advise one or more of the parties. It is the closest thing a law degree has to a flight simulator: the facts are invented, but the thinking is exactly what a practising lawyer does with a client's messy story.

That framing matters, because a problem question is not an essay wearing a costume. An essay asks you to discuss the law; a problem question asks you to apply it. The reader does not want everything you know about negligence. They want to know whether, on these facts, this claimant is likely to succeed against this defendant, and why.

Where the marks actually live

The most common way capable students underperform is by writing accurate law with thin application. University of London teaching guidance is blunt about this: discussing points the question does not raise loses credit, and the marks concentrate in applying the law to the facts, not in describing it. Every paragraph of pure legal description is a paragraph not earning application marks.

A related trap is what examiners sometimes call legal lecturing: opening with a page of general introduction to the whole area of law before touching the facts. The examiner wrote the question; they do not need the area explained. Start with the first issue instead, and let the relevant law arrive exactly where it is needed.

IRAC is a loop, not an essay plan

IRAC stands for issue, rule, application, conclusion, and some universities teach it as ILAC, with law in place of rule. Either way, the most useful thing to understand is that it is not a four-part plan for the whole answer. It is a cycle you run once per issue, per party. A scenario with three potential claims should read as three tight IRAC loops, each opened, argued and closed, not one giant R section followed by one giant A section.

Treat the acronym as a discipline rather than a dogma. Law schools vary in the labels they prefer and in how much structure they want on the page, so check your module guide and any marking guidance you are given. What does not vary is the underlying logic: identify the question, state the law that answers it with authority, apply that law to these facts, and conclude for the party you are advising.

Issue spotting: read the facts like they were drafted on purpose

Problem questions are written backwards. The examiner starts from the issues they want you to find, then builds facts that raise them. This means almost every detail is load-bearing: an age, a warning sign, a signature, a delay, an overheard remark. If a fact seems pointless, it is more likely a signal you have not yet matched it to an issue.

Read the scenario twice before writing anything. On the second pass, work party by party: for each person, list what happened to them, what they did, and what claim or defence each event might raise. This party-by-party sweep is the most reliable defence against the classic disaster of discovering a whole missed claim with ten minutes left.

• First pass: read for the story. Who did what to whom, in what order?
• Second pass: read for the law. Mark every fact against a possible issue.
• Plan: group the issues by party or by claim, and decide the order of your loops.
• Only then write, one IRAC loop at a time.

Stating the law: precise, brief, and backed by authority

Every legal proposition in your answer needs an authority: a case or a statutory provision. Not because ritual demands it, but because in law an unsupported assertion is just an opinion. One well-chosen case, stated with its principle in a single sentence, beats four cases summarised at length.

Resist the urge to copy out statutory language or recite long case facts. Open University guidance on problem questions makes exactly this point: quoting a provision verbatim shows you can transcribe, while restating its effect in your own words and then using it shows you understand it. The facts of an authority earn space only when you are drawing an analogy or a distinction with the scenario in front of you.

Application: the step that is the actual exam

Application means arguing, not announcing. Weak answers apply the law by assertion: the defendant owed a duty, the duty was breached, causation is satisfied. Strong answers show the argument: why these facts fit the legal test, what the counter-argument would be, and why one side of the argument is stronger on balance.

The habit that transforms answers is arguing both ways whenever the facts genuinely allow it. If a fact could help the defendant, say so, then explain what the claimant would respond. Examiners deliberately build ambiguity into scenarios to see who notices it. Spotting the tension and resolving it with reasons is the difference between a competent answer and a persuasive one.

Concluding when the answer is genuinely uncertain

Many students freeze at the conclusion because the scenario has no clean answer. It usually does not, on purpose. You are still expected to conclude: a client who asks their lawyer whether they will win does not accept a shrug as advice.

The professional move is a reasoned position with honest hedging. Say that a claim is likely or unlikely to succeed and give the deciding reason. Where the outcome genuinely turns on a missing fact, name the fact and advise conditionally: if the evidence shows one thing, the claim strengthens; if it shows the other, it fails. That sentence is not fence-sitting. It is exactly what competent legal advice sounds like.

Making it work under exam conditions

Structure is what survives time pressure. A few minutes spent planning, listing the parties, the issues and the order you will take them, repays itself several times over, because it prevents the two most expensive errors: the missed claim and the unbalanced answer that spends forty minutes on the first issue and four on the last.

Allocate time roughly by the number of issues, not by how much you happen to know about each. If you run short, a compressed IRAC loop, with the issue named, the rule in one sentence with one authority, the application in two, and a one-line conclusion, still collects marks across every stage. An unfinished essay on a single issue does not.

Common mistakes, so you can skip them

Most lost marks in problem questions come from a short list of patterns:

• Writing everything you know about the topic. Relevance is the first thing being examined.
• One giant law section followed by one giant application section. Loop per issue instead.
• Assertions without authority. Every rule needs a case or a section behind it.
• Ignoring the weaker side of the argument. The ambiguity was planted for you to find.
• Moralising instead of advising. What is fair is not the question; what the law does with these facts is.
• No conclusion, or a conclusion that appears from nowhere. Advise the party, with reasons.
• Spending half the exam on the first issue. Marks are spread across the whole scenario.

How this skill builds, and where Durmah fits

Problem-question technique is trainable in a way that few academic skills are, because the structure is repeatable and the feedback is concrete. Every practice answer teaches you something specific: an issue you missed, an application you asserted rather than argued, a conclusion you dodged. Collect those lessons and the improvement compounds term on term.

Durmah's role is practice and pressure-testing, never substitution. Use it to quiz yourself on the rules you plan to rely on, to talk through the issues you think a scenario raises before you write, and to check your understanding of a doctrine after a seminar. The written answer must be yours, produced by your own reasoning, because your reasoning is the thing the exam measures and the thing your future clients will pay for.