Yes. It absolutely is. You need to take really careful account of the rules which prevent you from falling foul of your institution’s regulations on this. If you want to be a professional lawyer then note that you will have to satisfy the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority or the Bar Council that you are a fit and proper person to be a lawyer. Examination malpractice or plagiarism will have to be notified to the relevant professional regulator and could stop your career in its tracks before it has even begun. Not really an outcome anyone would be looking for!
Here’s our handy guide:
Never copy out verbatim anything written by somebody else without putting it in inverted commas and attributing it to the author in the referencing section of your work.
If you need to refer to something which has been written by a third party and want to avoid using inverted commas and actually quoting it then you need to paraphrase so that you are using different words to convey the same meaning. You still have to reference to say where the idea came from. It can be easier to include a direct quotation than to paraphrase.
Where you are referring to published literature you need detail of when and where it was published and who wrote it. It is likely that you will be using either the Oscola or Harvard referencing schemes. Get to grips with the information they want before you start reading. If you struggle to understand the requirements ask your librarian for help. Then as you read note exactly the details you require for the bibliography. This will save you a heap of time at the end!
Never use an essay writing service. This is just plain cheating. You might think you won’t be caught and of course lots of people do “get away with it” but not everyone does. While your work will be marked “blind” there comes a point when a name is put next to your mark. If you have suddenly performed at a completely different level to hitherto this is likely to trigger an enquiry. Was the style of the recent high quality piece of work completely different from anything you have written before? Tutors can look at vocabulary and sentence structure and if they see a mismatch then enquiries will intensify.
So what are the penalties if you get this wrong?
Well, apart from possibly being barred by the SRA or Bar Council different sanctions can be applied by your institution. If it thinks you are trying to pass off the work of others as your own, then you will probably be disqualified from at least the examination to which this applied and possibly to the whole set of examinations at the time. You may be allowed to resit later but are likely to find that your marks are then capped at 40. There is more discretion for examination malpractice. This applies if your institution is convinced that you made an error, perhaps by referencing incorrectly rather than maliciously trying to pretend that someone else’s work was your own. You may have marks deducted or you may have to resit with or without a cap on the resit. Either way you don’t want this to happen!
Be both careful and scrupulously honest!