Read Law Right

We’re coming to the end of this series of blog posts and the general principles should be clearer now. The typical sort of documents you’ll be asked to read include Law Commission reports, government department reports and Select Committee reports.

Applying the principles then, we start with why. What is the reason for assigning you this document to read? Many of these document types will range more widely than the specific reason your tutors and lecturers had in mind.

For example, Law Commission Report 327, Making Land Work: Easements, Covenants and Profits a Prendre, self-evidently discusses three different types of interest in land in its 327 pages. It’s likely you can focus your attention on just one of these topics, immediately allowing you to focus your reading.

If the document includes an Executive Summary, make sure you read it. LC 327 doesn’t have one, so focus initially on the Introduction chapter. This includes a short summary of the report’s recommendations, which would be a great place to start your focused reading.

Part 2 explains the current state of the law. If you are already familiar with this you might skip it. However, the authors of Law Commission reports typically do a fantastic job of summarising the law in an understandable way so it can be worth your time reading this.

Part 3 focuses on Easements and Profits a Prendre. You might be picky about the elements you read in this section. For example, one of the controversial areas of discussion with easements is the easement of parking. So the section from 3.188 to 3.211 could be of real interest.

Part 5 focuses on covenants. Here one of the big areas of discussion is the enforcement of positive obligations, so another useful section to focus on.

Part 6 introduces discussion of the reform proposals in a lot more depth and the so-called “land obligation”. This goes on for some 30 pages and I suggest here your focus will depend on your assignment or seminar questions. Your lecturers will probably have chosen a particular element of reform for you to explore, and as always it is worth being picky.

As is typical with Law Commission reports this example has a lengthy section of Appendices, most of which won’t concern you. There are also two substantive sections that I haven’t mentioned on Registered Titles and the Jurisdiction of the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal, which also probably won’t concern you at undergraduate level.

This is as much as to say – as with previous document types – it is worth spending a few minutes getting to grips with the structure of the document and identifying parts that are particularly relevant for you at this point in your studies. Use the techniques described earlier when reading textbook chapters. E.g. skim the main headings and read the first sentence of each paragraph to get the gist.

In-depth reading of the relevant parts can follow in subsequent study sessions, allowing you to break down the reading into bite-sized chunks, as we have been doing with the previous document types.

It really is ok to treat these documents as reference works. They may not admit as much, but your tutors and lecturers really aren’t expecting you to read them word-for-word.