LAW Students' Scholarly Writing

Theses, dissertations, law review articles and student notes are meant to advance the accumulated knowledge on a particular subject. For this reason, their thesis statement should be novel or have some original aspect, allowing the finished product to contribute something new to the discussion. Grading rubrics for seminar papers often give credit for topic originality as well. The degree of originality required will vary among the types of papers and this should be discussed with your faculty supervisor or professor.

To determine the originality of thesis for a law paper, one must do a preemption check, as  it is  called in the United States. In short, this requires you to read law review articles and, as appropriate, theses/dissertations on your topic to ensure that your exact thesis has not already been written on.