Review

As we have seen, many legal-writing tasks have a degree of overlap. A first-year student essay may well have, when broken down, many of the same elements as a judgment penned by a judge. Legal problem-solving exercises, whether set as learning tasks or as the result of evidence in court or client instructions in practice, have a fairly irreducible set of matters to be covered. These include: • an appreciation of who the parties are; • the legal issues in play; • the analysis of those issues; • preliminary advice based on the available facts; and • ways and means of advancing the issues and resolving matters. This is where the various problem-solving frameworks become useful.