Taxation law
TLAW603 – Taxation Law & Practice Legal Essay Checklist1 Structure and Organisation

Does the title of my essay/paper clearly inform the reader of what my essay is about?

Yes ? No ?

Does my introduction or abstract state the central question that is being addressed/answered in my essay?

Yes ? No ?

Does my introduction give a roadmap for the rest of the essay, explaining how the paper is structured to answer the central question posed?

Yes ? No ?

Have I used headings and subheadings to signpost the content of the subsequent section of the essay?

Yes ? No ?

Does every paragraph in my essay have a topic sentence? Does the content of every paragraph relate to its topic sentence?

Yes ? No ?

Do my body paragraphs seamlessly transition into the next paragraph? Yes ? No ? Does my conclusion summarise the argument made in my essay, show the reader how I have addressed the question posed in my introduction, and contain no new content?

Yes ? No ?

General elements of good writing, presentation and referencing

Have I edited my essay to avoid wordiness and redundancy? Yes ? No ?

Have I avoided the use of antiquated words such as ‘hereinafter’ or ‘aforementioned’ and have I used Latin words or phrases only where necessary to convey a precise legal meaning?

Yes ? No ?

Have I edited my essay to eliminate the passive voice? Yes ? No ?

Have I used shorter sentences and paragraphs to convey clear meaning in my writing?

Yes ? No ?

Have I retained necessary words such as “the” and “a”, and omitted unnecessary words that convey no extra meaning?

Yes ? No ?

Have I abided by more general rules of good writing (gender neutral, formal tone etc)?

Yes ? No ?

Are the pages of my essay numbered, and is my essay in an appropriate and consistent font and clearly formatted so that headings and paragraphs can be differentiated? Is my essay double-spaced (or otherwise formatted in the way required by the given assessment task)?

Yes ? No ?

Have I properly referenced my work to acknowledge the source of words and ideas?

Yes ? No ?

1 This checklist is largely based on the University of Sydney Law School Legal Writing Resource Guide 2020.