Your exams may include a number of ‘Problem Questions’ for you to answer. Problem Questions are hypothetical factual scenarios designed to test your legal reasoning and analysis. They can often feel intimidating – examiners like to provide fairly long, detailed scenarios that may not always seem that realistic. Remember, examiners are testing your knowledge and understanding of the syllabus; and that includes obscure statutes or cases that are rarely used in practice!

However, with practice, Problem Questions can be effectively tackled. Below are some general tips on how to approach them. You may also find it useful to refer to the chapters within the textbook, which take you through how to apply this technique to specific Tort Law examples. 

How do Problem Questions differ from Essays?

An important point to remember is that a Problem Question answer requires a different approach to essay writing. You should therefore refrain from writing everything you know about an area of the law within Problem Questions. The key is to focus directly on the issues raised by the question and address them as concisely as possible. 

It is also important to remember that Problem Questions do not require you to engage in the merits of academic debates. Your task is to simply to apply the law to the specific legal issue and offer a short (one sentence!) conclusion as to the parties’ probability of (or obstacles to!) a successful claim. 

The Magic Formula

The key to successfully answering a Problem Question is to break it down into manageable parts, and structure your answer accordingly. A good way to achieve this is to use the following formula:

1. Identify the relevant Issue(s)

2. Identify the relevant Rules

3. Apply the rules to the facts

4. Briefly Conclude on the potential success of the party’s claim

A useful way to remember this is: IRAC – Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion.

1. Issue(s)

Start by getting to grips with the facts

Problem Questions will often involve a sequence of events that can be divided into discrete factual scenarios. A key starting point, therefore, is to identify the different scenarios and structure your answer accordingly. There are a number of ways to do this:

• Take each paragraph or factual scenario and analyse each parties’ claims within that scenario

• Take each party to the action individually and work your way through the Problem Question from their perspective

The way you structure your answer may ultimately depend on what the question asks you to do. Be careful therefore to read the Problem Question in full and not to launch straight in. In particular, look out for the end of each Problem Question, which will often contain phrases such as ‘Advise the parties of any claims and liabilities in Tort’. Sometimes it may specifically name the parties the examiner wishes you to answer, at the exclusion of others. This will often help to inform you of the best way to structure your answer.

When getting to grips with the facts, it is also important to:

• Read the Problem Question carefully and more than once. It is important you have a full understanding of the facts. It may be helpful to draw a diagram on a piece of paper, which helps you to visualise the facts and the relationship between the parties.

• Do not doubt the validity of the facts given. It is not your task to argue whether you believe the facts presented. You must simply take them to be true.

• Do, however, consider if there is anything we don’t know from the facts. This is especially so if we require further information in order to be able to conclude on the likelihood of a claim.

Identify the issues

Once you have a good understanding of the facts and the structure for your problem question, you can move on to identifying the relevant legal issues raised by the facts. Again, it is important to breakdown the various factual scenarios so that you can identify each and every legal issue that arises. 

Make sure that your answer spells out this issue clearly to the examiner. In particular, your answer should start by identifying the relevant factual scenario before, ideally in one sentence, presenting the key legal issue raised by the scenario. For example: ‘Jenny throws an apple, which hits Sophie. The issue is whether this constitutes assault or battery.’ 

Additionally, try to also avoid ‘jumping around’ between issues. Ideally, you should deal with each legal issue separately and concisely before moving on to the next. This will ensure your answer is clear and logical to follow.

2. Rule(s)

Once you have identified the relevant facts and the legal issue specific to those facts, you must state briefly the law governing this issue. It is worth repeating that this is not an opportunity to recite everything you know about that area of the law. It is important you use the law to answer the specific issue. You should not use the specific issue to tell us everything you know about the law. 

When referencing the relevant law make sure you cite key cases or legislation that apply. It is important that you always provide authorities for the legal principles and rules you apply. Again, this should be done as succinctly and as focused to the question as possible. You are not (generally) required to give a thorough account of the judgments of those cases. However, if it is relevant to your analysis, you may wish to draw upon specific aspects of the fact or judgment that apply. Again, this is not an opportunity to cite large chunks of the judgment. You should be careful to ensure any reference to cases is dealt with concisely. 

Sometimes the law may not be clear. For example, the law may be unresolved, which lead to a number of possible interpretations. In short, the issue is still a ‘moot point’. Do not panic. You are likely to be rewarded if you point out these uncertainties within the law. It would be helpful if you also outlined (again, briefly) the possible interpretations of the law. This is not an opportunity to recite academic debates on how the law should be. Keep your explanations short and concise, preferably by reference to the differing case law and legislation that may support those alternative interpretations. 

3. Application

Once you have identified the facts, stated the legal issue and outlined the relevant law, you need to apply this law to the specific facts.  

It is important to remember that there is not always a ‘right’ answer in the way that the law is applied. Provided you demonstrate the logic in your application (which you can do by demonstrating the link between the relevant law and the facts) then you will be rewarded. 

If you are grappling with a ‘moot point’ in the law (mentioned above) be sure to briefly outline how each potential interpretation would apply on the facts, which view you find most convincing and why. 

This is also the opportunity to raise any aspects in the question which are uncertain due to insufficient factual information. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to state that more information will be required in order to apply the relevant law to the facts. It would be helpful in this instance to explain why the additional information would be relevant to determining the issue. 

When grappling with insufficient facts or uncertainties within the law you must also see if there are:

• Any detailed factors or formulae that a court may take into account

• Any opportunities to ‘argue by analogy’. That is, to use another case with a similar fact pattern that the courts may find persuasive in determining the issue

4. Conclusion

Finally, once you have completed all of the above, you should provide a one-sentence conclusion that clearly demonstrates how your analysis will ultimately apply to the parties’ claim. For example, it may be to outline the likelihood of a successful claim. Alternatively, you may wish to emphasise that the party’s claim is uncertain and requires further information in order to be determined. 

Ultimately, it does not matter how you conclude provided you can show you have thought about the issue logically.