21 Case briefing – media presentation assessment
Dr Verona Ní Drisceoil
Verona’s assessment aims to gives all students an opportunity within the curriculum to develop oracy skills, which are essential for legal work. She provides ample academic skills support throughout the seminars and additional help for students who are anxious about public speaking.
Teaching area
Assessment
Course
LLB Law, Level 4 core module: English Legal System
Around 360 mostly UK students from diverse backgrounds
Description
The primary motivator and guiding rationale for changing the mode of assessment in this core Law module back in 2020/21 was widening participation and opportunities. (See further Ní Drisceoil 2024, 2026; Sambell 2012). I believe that all students should have the opportunity to develop voice-work (oracy) skills. As a Law School, while we offer a range of extra-curricular opportunities to support students to develop voice-work and advocacy skills, many of our students cannot take part due to a restraint on numbers and other responsibilities they might have, including caring responsibilities or work. For that reason, I sought to embed this key transferable skill and opportunity into a core Law module via assessment so that all students could take part and develop their skills.
This assessment mode asks students to take on the role of a trainee solicitor and prepare a case briefing presentation for their supervising solicitor and other partners of a fictional law firm. Students pre-record the case briefing presentation and submit it for marking. A particularly novel element of the assessment is that students are expected to include an evaluative judgement of their performance (see Boud et al. 2019; Tai 2018). This is pitched as ‘you stay online to discuss the briefing’ with your supervising solicitor. They are, in this respect, also assessed on self-reflection.
Example brief
You are a trainee solicitor at the law firm Clyde & Clyde, London. Your supervising solicitor, Valerie Adebisi, asks you to research the Supreme Court case of AM (Zimbabwe) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2020] UKSC 17, [2020] 2 WLR 1152 and prepare a legal case briefing presentation of 10 minutes (max) for your supervising solicitor and the Head of the Human Rights Division at the firm.
The client is unable to attend. You have been asked to record the presentation so that it can be added to the client’s file. Once you complete the presentation, you stay online to have a reflective debrief with your supervising solicitor where she asks you to respond to a number of questions.
Backward design
To develop this assessment, I adopted a backward design to assessment approach. Backward design requires you to work back from the assessment and ensure students receive ample opportunities to practise and develop the skills required to excel. I built in voice-work opportunities within seminars and offered extra support for students who felt particularly anxious about public speaking.
Students have seven seminars in this module. Working backwards from the assessment, the focus for the seminars is as follows:
Seminar 7: Digital Literacy, exemplars and how to upload the recording.
Seminar 6: OSCOLA Referencing (the referencing style required for Law)
Seminar 5: Voice Work 2
Seminar 4: Voice Work 1
Seminar 3: The Doctrine of Precedent and Human Rights
Seminar 2: Write a Case Summary
Seminar 1: Introduction to Law
Outcomes
Inclusive assessment
The assessment is inclusive in the sense that it ensures all Law students receive ample opportunities to practise and develop the skills required to excel.
Academic skills and student support
Students develop voice-work and advocacy skills that are essential to academic success in Law. They are also transferable skills. The support is available to all students, not only those who are able to participate in extracurricular activities in Law.
Comments
On the impact of this assessment, students have noted that:
…soft skills are underdeveloped at university, so the ELS assessment gave the perfect opportunity to develop confidence and speaking, while engaging with legal material and analysis.
(Final-year student 2024)
Another student noted how the ELS assessment provides students
…with a safe space to practise and learn important skills I will likely need to use during my future career in the legal world.
(Undergraduate student 2024)
References
Boud, D. et al. (2018) Developing Evaluative Judgement in Higher Education: Assessment for Knowing and Producing Quality Work, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Ní Drisceoil, V. (2024) ‘Developing Authentic Assessment for Learning’, Learning Matters blog, 10 January (accessed 4 March 2026)
Ní Drisceoil, V., Wilson, J. and Ashton, J. (2026) How to Embed Authenticity in Legal Assessments, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Sambell, K. et al. (2012) Assessment for Learning in Higher Education, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Tai, J. et al. (2018) ‘Developing Evaluative Judgement: Enabling Students to Make Decisions About the Quality of Work’, Higher Education, 76.3: 467–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0220-3 (accessed 4 March 2026)
