Category: dissertation

With a background in neurosciences, and currently practising as a psychotherapist I have always had a keen interest in how the brain (actually) works, and perhaps more importantly how we might utilise that knowledge to maximise our mental capacity when it comes to approaching the (undoubtedly) challenging UoL LLB (Hons) that many of us are harnessed to. 

The last two/three decades have seen a considerable reframing of the neuro-cognitive paradigm, and in case you don’t have a dictionary to hand, what I’m talking about is thinking, and how we conceptualise our capacity to think and essentially process cognitive data. The two biggest breakthroughs concern what has been termed neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections throughout life) and what we might term cognitive ‘compartmentalisation’; referring to the fact that intelligence is very far from an unitary concept but is distinctly multi-faceted, multi-modular if you will.

Though the former is of great comfort to a mature student like me (it is now official: you CAN teach an old dog new tricks) I’m interested, in this the second of two blog articles concerning ‘how to write a dissertation’, to focus on the latter and in particular its implications when we come to tackling this 10,000 word marathon.

What compartmentalisation refers to, and as with many concepts it is glaringly obvious when it is stated in simple terms, is the idea that even though there is some degree of ‘leakage’ skill-sets are often, if not usually, modality specific. So, to illustrate, simply because I play the  piano very well does not mean I will be a world class boxer, the national chess champion may be an hopelessly nerve wracked public speaker, the articulate playwright no great shakes at downhill skiing. 

The implications of this realisation are highly significant for any potential dissertation writers (and so far the University of London LLB Dissertation Group has 117 active members). Stated in its skeleton form, it means if you want to get good at writing, write; and if that task involves academic writing, write academically.

Let’s break it down into a few bullet suggestions:

i. Take every opportunity to write; writing does generalise… so a good creative writer will more quickly learn the necessary skills of academic writing than someone who has never put pen to paper. So long before I started writing law related articles I’d published a bunch of (as it happens politically related) book reviews, been That’s Shanghai travel correspondent for 24 months, and written a personal blog (http://markpummell.com) for some years.

ii. Start learning to write in the specific language required of you within the legal profession. This may take the form of self-published articles (https://ulondon.academia.edu/MarkPummell) comments on legal websites and/or relevant Facebook pages. The law has its own glossary and it needs to be mastered. This process can obviously be supplemented by broad base legal reading, particularly academic articles and caselaw. But the word truly is supplemented; reading is not a substitute for writing. We can recall. They are different forms of ability.

iii. Start small. 10,000 words (equating to roughly 30 pages of 1.5 spaced type written pdf) is no small achievement, and it is unlikely that you will be able to tackle it if your previous personal best was a 250 word Facebook post. Much like a marathon, build up to it. Write some 1,500 – 2,000 word articles first. When you have an half dozen or so of those under your belt, suddenly the task seems that little less Sisyphean. 

iv. And finally (for today) be patient with yourself. I wrote mine over exactly 20 days. Having prepared for around three months (downloading and reading relevant articles and cases etc.) I set myself the very reasonable (and for that read achievable) target of 500 words per day. Sometimes I did more and sometimes I did less, but there was not a day that went by during that period that I didn’t write something. Self disciple is the name of the game.

So with that in mind, sharpen your pencils… on your marks, get set, go… time waits for no man; and it will somehow not seem, or indeed be any easier tomorrow.

Perhaps at these times we should remember the (slightly modified) words of Dory: “just keep writing… just keep writing…”

References:

i. https://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai
ii. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=239250946629830 iii. Finding Dory – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2277860/

“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!’’

With Diwali just over, and Christmas poised to loom large, I’m feeling particularly festive. The truth is I have much to be grateful for; my health, two wonderful children, a beautiful partner, and as a psychoanalyst, a job that never ceases to amaze. 

But much as Scrooge on that most joyous of Christmas mornings, today you’d find a particular spring in my step, and the reason is simple enough: 10,015 words of completed dissertation. It came at a cost, perhaps not requiring the same kind of existential soul-searching that was asked of poor Ebenezer, but a cost nonetheless. One that on completion merits at least one large glass of red and a few oven warmed mince-pies; even if I say so myself.

But the aim of this piece is not simply to gloat, for that would be most un-Christmasy, nor to simply expound on my efforts which would be nothing short of tedious; the aim is to both encourage, and guide other would-be dissertation aspirants. 

For starters I would ask you, albeit rhetorically, why not give  this module a try? Indeed, why wouldn’t you? It’s challenging, has an high pass rate, relatively high mark averages, but most importantly… pause for effect… it has to be better than sitting another three hour ‘unseen examination’ whilst being circled by vulturous invigilators that would strip search you if they even notice a misplaced eraser. 

There you have it… we’ve established the why. But what of the how?

Well in the first instance, as part of your study pack bundle, it comes with an excellent study guide that will guide you through the all important process of writing your initial proposal. I cannot overestimate the importance of formulating a good research question. 

For brevity’s sake at this stage let me make a few simple points:

i. You need to formulate a research ‘question’, not simply delineate an area of law that interest you. Perhaps for example you find the law of ‘joint enterprise’ interesting, and no doubt it is, but that does not in and of itself constitute a research question. However an outcome study considering the appeals that have followed from the Supreme Court decision Jogee [2016] for example might be more apropos.

ii. Consider preparing more than one proposal. I ended up preparing three; two property related topics and one criminal law. Of those, I think possibly the latter was the most interesting, it concerned the ‘insanity plea’ and aimed to be an essentially empirical continuation of RD Mackay’s  scholarship in this area. But after several e-mails to the Ministry of Justice (invoking the Freedom of information Act 2000) it became apparent that I just wasn’t going to be able to access the data I needed to complete the research. So in the simplest of terms, the research question asked needs to be realistically answerable.

iii. Try to become au fait with basic research ‘methodologies’. This really constitutes the ‘how’ you will attempt to answer the question you propose to answer. Is your study to be qualitative and/or quantitative? Where will you source your data? What will be the scope of your analysis? In truth hardcore empirical research (the stuff that scientists are more than familiar with) and law rarely overlap. I personally think that it is both a shame (it softens the usefulness of many of the research papers written, reducing them ultimately to at best opinions) and a pattern that is beginning to change. So one way you might think to make your research stand out is to add an empirical component: “since Jogee [2016] there have been 12 appeals 7 of which were unsuccessful, 3 of which led to sentence reductions, and 2 of which remain as yet undecided…” (data) reads far better than “I think Jogee was a really bad decision as it doesn’t seem to have changed anything …” (opinion)

iv.Finally (for today) I would suggest you choose a topic that really interests you, for (as we’ll discuss further in Part II) you’ll soon discover that 10,000 words don’t just write themselves. Considering the ‘common intention’ constructive trust I ended up downloading over 100 cases and probably a similar number of journal articles.

That hopefully should get you started, and be enough for you to see your proposal both written and ultimately accepted. In a subsequent blog (just keep writing – Part II) I hope to explore in greater depth how you might tackle writing the actual body of the dissertation itself.

References: 

1. Charles Dickens 1843 novella – A Christmas Carol
2. R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8
3. RD Mackay – Fact and fiction about the insanity defence