Law students reveal their worst ever essay feedback

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By Legal Cheek on

7

‘Your writing is pour’


Law students shared their responses on Legal Cheek’s Instagram page, answering the question posed to its 100k+ followers: What is the worst feedback you’ve ever received on an essay? The answers were both hilarious and shocking …

“‘Your writing is pour’ (yes she literally spelt ‘pour’, thanks lady)”, wrote one disgruntled law student. Face palm.

“This coursework was excellent across the board. I have very little criticism to add” [scores 62%]’, another student added. This is a seemingly common theme with another commenter chipping in, “I had the best feedback from my first Tort assignment from which I got the lowest grade: 53%. From bad feedback I generally got 65%.” Could this be any more confusing 😂?

“Maybe look at Referencing guide,” writes another student, who isn’t alone. Another commenter received the feedback: “Do you even understand OSCOLA?” Ouch.

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But at least their essays were written better than ChatGPT. One commenter’s written efforts got flagged as “written by AI” when they’d slaved over it alone 🤦.

Some had particularly savage lecturers: “A reasonable attempt,” wrote one who scored the student 68%. “Nice try,” said another. Some professors even got personal, saying “you have limited understanding of European law”  and “you could have at least pretended to try”. FML.

Some were clearly just having a bad day: “On a different day, it might have gotten a better grade”, wrote another lecturer who gave the student 58%.

Among some particularly informative essay feedback like “???”, “Huh?” and “Confusing”, lies perhaps the most savage feedback on the post:

“Even a layperson without legal education would understand the world of differences in this matter.”

What’s the worst feedback you’ve ever received on a law essay? Comment below 👇👀

7 Comments

Not at DWF, thankfully

I always find it interesting that a lot of lecturers gained a 2:2 themselves in their law degree, and then you see such feedback…

Singh

The worst feedback I’ve gotten was scoring a 69% not understanding how I missed 1% for a first on criminal law and had an entire paragraph I wrote highlighted with the tutor feedback ‘ok’ – ?????

I went to law school and all I got was this exam mark

You got feedback?

Van der Beek

I passed Equity and Trusts with 65% by pretending to sound like I knew what it was all about and writing “Vandervell” a lot.

Elaine

Not degree related but teaching observation feedback. I’ll paraphrase. ‘Session could have been enhanced by use of a SMARTBOARD. (The organisation didn’t possess one). Ironically, the reviewer had no qualification in Education where I have a Post Grad. 🙄

NQ

Always remember, after getting a mid 2:1 in a 1st year course course, getting literally no feedback. Asked for some feedback as this was 1st year and I got (something along the lines of) ‘as you got a 2:1, you don’t need feedback’. Cheers boss.

Also remember querying whether the graduate student who marked my paper actually had read my essay. Lecturer didn’t take that kindly, but the feedback was not correlated to my essay whatsoever. Jokers. I love EU law – especially when studying it during BREXIT 🙂 /s

Oz Barrister

In the late 1980s at uni I wrote an essay about how the (then) new technique of identifying people using genetic testing, from blood, semen etc, in Criminal Law, would change the whole system . I presented it to blank looks from my classmates, and the feedback from my law Professor was that it was too obscure and would never have any practical legal application. I reminded him of it years later when I ran into him. 34 years later, I specialise in medical law as a barrister.

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