Mailbag – Can you write my law school assignment for me?

Every now and then I get the odd email asking for help. Sometimes it’s choosing a law school, how to cope with legal exams, whether I recommend a masters in law, how can someone survive a law degree with their sanity and bank balance intact etc. etc.

Every now and then I get something really wacky, often concerning someone slipping on a spilt yoghurt or something similar and suffering some kind of personal injury and whether I think they can claim compensation.
Heck, what do I know – I don’t even like yoghurt! Be right back

Anyhow, the following little gem which plopped into my inbox was a first – even for me:

Hi Michael,

I am wanting some coursework doing in taxation i would be willing to pay £120 per1000 words, its 3000 words in total so i would more than happy to pay £360 in total.

you can take your time doing it. 3-4 weeks.

would you be interested in doing it?

Many Thanks

[X]

Call me old fashioned, but I really couldn’t believe the audacity and blatancy of this.

Apparently students don’t complete coursework by themselves any longer – they outsource it, by first putting it out to tender. No student should utter the phrase that they ‘want some coursework doing’.

Had I been interested, though, it seems I could have taken my time with it. How generous – like he was doing me a favour!

But what did he think this is - my email address isn’t enquires@order-a-law-paper.com !!

When I’d finished simmering a few days later, I did take a couple of minutes to respond and stated that I didn’t engage in plagiarism and I didn’t suggest that he did either. Whilst having to write papers can be annoying, stressful, difficult and all the rest, it’s that way for a reason and paying someone to do it for you shouldn’t even be an option. (He’d probably found some moron to write something for him by that point, but I hope he hadn’t).

There are plenty of other things a struggling student can try: talking to lecturers, going to a drop-in study session, trying different, more approachable texts and so on. But paying someone to write a paper which you intend to pass off as your own really is a stretch too far. You’d be better failing or dropping out than that.