Analyzing Legal Assessment Tasks and Command Words

1. Identifying the "Call of the Question"

In any law assessment, whether it's a 1,400-word problem question or a 100-word short answer, your first task is to isolate the specific instruction you are being asked to follow. This is often referred to as the "call of the question." It's the legally operative part of the prompt that directs your entire analysis. Any facts in a scenario or propositions in an essay title are merely the raw material you must work with to fulfil this core instruction. Failing to identify or adhere to it is the fastest way to lose marks, no matter how brilliant the rest of your answer is.

Let's begin with a resource from Georgetown Law that explains this concept.

The key takeaway is that your professor has set a specific task, and any analysis outside that task is irrelevant and will not earn you points. For a problem question, the "call of the question" is often found at the very end. This leads to a crucial strategic tip for tackling fact patterns.

The following video from the Legal Briefs channel provides a practical demonstration of this strategy. While the example used is from Tort Law, the principle is universal and directly applicable to your upcoming Criminal Law assignments.

2. Classifying the Command Word

Once you've identified the operative task, the next step is to analyse the verb at its heart—the "command word." This word tells you what kind of intellectual work you need to do. Are you being asked to simply recall information, apply a rule, or critically judge a legal doctrine?

Answering a question that asks you to "evaluate" with a simple "explanation" is a common reason that good students fail to get top marks. You may have demonstrated knowledge, but you haven't demonstrated the specific higher-order skill the examiner is testing.

The following article from Oxbridge Notes provides an excellent overview of this concept.

To structure this thinking, we can use a well-established educational framework: Bloom's Taxonomy. It organizes cognitive skills into a hierarchy, from the most basic to the most complex. By mapping law assessment command words onto this hierarchy, you can instantly gauge the level of depth and criticality required for your answer.

Here is how typical LLB command words fit into this framework:

• Remember / Understand (Lower-Order): These tasks test your knowledge and comprehension of legal rules and concepts.

  • State / Define: Recall and present a precise legal definition or rule. (e.g., "State the test for dishonesty from Ivey v Genting Casinos.")
  • Describe / Explain: Provide details and reasons, showing how a legal concept or process works. (e.g., "Explain the requirements for a valid contract.")

• Apply (Mid-Order): This is the core task of problem questions. You must use the legal rules you know in a new factual situation.

  • Apply / Advise / Discuss liability: Use IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) to determine the legal consequences for parties in a scenario. (e.g., "Advise Dave on his potential liability for theft.")

• Analyse / Evaluate (Higher-Order): These tasks require you to go beyond simply stating the law. You must deconstruct it, form judgments about it, and support your position with reasoned argument.

  • Analyse: Break a topic down into its constituent parts and examine the relationships between them. (e.g., "Analyse the components of a 'qualifying trigger' for the loss of control defence.")
  • Compare / Contrast: Examine the similarities and differences between two or more legal concepts.
  • Evaluate / Critically discuss / Assess: Make a judgment about the value, merit, or effectiveness of a law, a case, or a legal reform. This is the highest level of analysis and requires you to weigh arguments, consider counter-arguments, and come to a substantiated conclusion. (e.g., "Critically evaluate the decision in R v G [2003] UKHL 50.")

Your goal of achieving 90%+ requires you to excel at every level, but particularly to demonstrate mastery of the higher-order Analyse and Evaluate skills whenever they are requested.

3. A Masterclass in Deconstruction

Understanding the theory is one thing; seeing it in practice is another. The following video provides a masterclass in the kind of deep analysis of a question that separates First Class answers from the rest. The presenter deconstructs essay questions to uncover their hidden assumptions and demands.

4. Practice Deconstruction

Let's apply these principles to some sample questions relevant to your Criminal Law module. For each question below, take a moment to:

1. Identify the legally operative task (the core instruction).
2. Classify the main command word(s) using the Bloom's Taxonomy framework (e.g., Understand, Apply, Evaluate).

Question 1:

Alan takes a bottle of wine from a supermarket shelf. He drinks it in the store and leaves the empty bottle on a shelf before walking out without paying.

Advise Alan on his potential liability for theft.

Question 2:

Explain the meaning of 'appropriation' under s.3(1) of the Theft Act 1968, with reference to relevant case law.

Question 3:

"The 'loss of control' defence, introduced by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, has successfully addressed the gender bias inherent in the old law of provocation."

Critically discuss this statement.

Self-Assessment Check:

• Question 1: The task is to "Advise Alan on his potential liability for theft." The command word is Advise, which requires you to Apply the law of theft to the given facts using the IRAC structure.
• Question 2: The task is to "Explain the meaning of 'appropriation'." The command word is Explain, which requires you to demonstrate Understanding of this key legal concept, supported by definitions and examples from case law.
• Question 3: The task is to "Critically discuss this statement." The command word is Critically discuss, which requires you to Evaluate the statement's claim. This is a high-level task. You cannot just describe the loss of control defence; you must assess whether it has truly fixed the alleged gender bias of the old law, using arguments, counter-arguments, and evidence to support your judgment.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we have established the critical first step toward writing a 90%+ law answer: deconstructing the question. You now have a systematic method to pinpoint the exact task you've been set and to understand the intellectual level at which you are expected to respond.

Key Takeaways:

• Every assessment question contains a "call of the question"—a specific, legally operative task you must perform.
• The strategy of reading the prompt at the end of a problem scenario first helps to focus your reading and issue-spotting.
• Command words (State, Explain, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate) are explicit instructions about the type of thinking required.
• Frameworks like Bloom's Taxonomy help classify these commands and understand the expected depth of your answer. Ignoring a higher-order command like "Evaluate" and providing a simple "Description" is a guaranteed way to lose marks.

In our next lesson, we will examine the other side of this equation: the marking criteria. You'll learn how to read a university's marking rubric and translate vague descriptors like "excellent analysis" into a concrete checklist of features that your answer must include. By combining a precise understanding of the question with a precise understanding of the marking scheme, you build a complete blueprint for a top-tier answer before you even begin to write.