Law tutors

Jurisdiction first, everything else second

Common law systems — England and Wales, Ireland, much of the Commonwealth — reason primarily from decided cases, with statute interpreted against a body of precedent. Civil law systems, which cover most of continental Europe, reason primarily from codified statute, with case law playing a supporting role.

That difference shapes the assessed skill. A common law student must be able to extract a ratio from a judgment, distinguish cases on their facts and argue by analogy. A civil law student must be able to work systematically from code provisions and doctrinal commentary. Both are demanding; they are not transferable.

So the first question to a prospective law tutor is which jurisdiction they trained and teach in, and the second is whether they have taught your specific modules. A tutor with an excellent English law degree offering help with a French licence en droit is offering something different from what is needed.

• Confirm the jurisdiction before anything else
• Check the specific modules — contract, tort, public, EU, criminal
• Ask which system they were trained in, not only where they live
• For EU law, confirm familiarity with current post-2020 arrangements

Problem questions and essays are different exams

Undergraduate law assessment divides into problem questions — a factual scenario requiring legal analysis — and essays requiring critical evaluation of an area of law. Students are typically better at one and assume the other will follow.

Problem questions reward a disciplined structure: identify the legal issues, state the applicable law with authority, apply it to the specific facts, and reach a reasoned conclusion, including on points where the law is unsettled. The most common failure is describing the law accurately and never applying it to the facts in front of them.

Essays reward argument rather than exposition. A student who summarises an area of law competently and offers no critical position writes a middling essay however thorough the summary. The upper bands need a thesis, engagement with academic commentary, and a defended view.

What to look for in a tutor

Ask whether they have marked undergraduate law work. Marking experience matters here more than practice experience: a practising solicitor knows how the law operates commercially and may not know what an examiner rewards in a problem question.

Ask how they teach case reading. Students drown in reading lists because nobody taught them to read a judgment efficiently — to find the ratio, identify the material facts and skim what is obiter. A tutor with a method for that saves a student more hours than any amount of content explanation.

Under the Bologna Process, a first-cycle degree carries 180 to 240 ECTS credits with a minimum of 60 per year, where one year of 60 ECTS represents roughly 1,500 to 1,800 hours of work. Law programmes sit at the heavier end of that reading load, which is why efficiency in reading is the skill with the highest return.

Timing and cost

The highest-value window is early in the first year, when reading technique and problem-question structure are being formed. Students who develop good habits then cope with the volume; those who do not spend three years behind it.

The second useful window is in the weeks before examinations, focused on timed problem questions with feedback — which is a more efficient use of tutoring than further reading.

Evidence on one-to-one tuition favours short, regular sessions over a defined period rather than open-ended weekly hours. For law, a practical pattern is a session to plan an answer, independent writing, then a session reviewing the marked piece.

Expect roughly €60 to €150 an hour. Law prices toward the upper end of undergraduate tutoring because qualified tutors have high-value alternative uses of their time. TutorDeluxe lists tutors from €40 an hour, charges students nothing and takes no commission.