LAWS5980
EQUITY & TRUSTS
SEMINAR WORKSHEETS
SPRING 2024
1
, Guidance on Preparing for Seminars
Below is some guidance on how best to prepare for the seminars and how to use the
seminar worksheets.
Regarding the seminar questions…
The seminar questions are designed to guide your private study (ie reading, note-
taking and thinking). It is strongly recommended that you write full answers to
seminar questions; if you do this you will have a complete set of notes for the
whole module from which to prepare for the exam, and which you can correct and/or
supplement following seminars or when revising.
It is not expected that all questions will be discussed in the seminar; as stated above,
a number of questions are designed to assist private study rather than seminar
discussion.
Finally, be warned: most of the principles, doctrines and remedies studied are
controversial and/or in a state of flux (as is the case in many areas of law), so there
may be more than one way of understanding them. It also means that there often
isn’t a ‘correct answer’ – hence why so many of questions in this area end up in the
Court of Appeal or Supreme Court!
Regarding the lectures…
Module content is provided via a combination of the core readings and the lectures –
it is important you listen to the lectures before the seminar in order to be prepared for
the seminar. Take notes during the lecture (or after if you prefer to listen to a lecture
in all its ‘purity’!). Taking notes does not mean ‘verbatim’, ie don’t try to copy down all
words said because you won’t ‘hear’ what is being said and consequently won’t
‘understand’ what is being said; instead note down what is significant, ie the ‘gist’ of
a point or argument being made. Significant quotes will be provided on the slides so
there is no need to attempt to copy these out. In short: develop your note-taking
skills and be prepared to listen to the development of an argument in the lectures.
Regarding the ‘key cases for noting’…
For most seminars there is a list of ‘key cases for noting’. These are cases that you
should look out for in the lectures, required reading and any further reading
undertaken, making a note of what it’s about and what its relevance is in terms of the
topic. If they don’t come up in the reading, you should look up their significance
either in one of the recommended texts or via the electronic law library (eg Westlaw).
They are cases you are strongly encouraged to read, if not the whole case then at
least the headnote.
2
,Regarding the further readings…
There are numerous suggested further readings; it’s not expected that you’ll read
any of them for preparing for seminars – in some ways they can be understood as
‘footnotes’ to the lectures – but if you find a something of interest (whether from the
lecture, the seminar, or one of the readings) and want to read more on it, this is the
place to start. They are also a good starting point for further reading for the
coursework questions.
Regarding comparative material…
We compare and contrast the approach of other jurisdictions such as Australia and
Canada as a way of critically reflecting on questions of principle and policy. I’m often
asked ‘will this be on the exams?’ My answer is always: anything that is included on
the course could be subject to assessment on the course unless I explicitly state
otherwise. As you can see from the module learning outcomes, above, comparative
material is relevant. So, in short: yes, there could be questions requiring you to
compare and contrast the position in England and Wales with that of Australia and/or
Canada.
Regarding the use of AI…
Clearly Artificial Intelligence, in particular GenerativeAI, is now a ‘thing’ – you will all
no doubt have heard of ChatGPT but there are others available. I can’t police your
use of these in preparing for seminars etc, but just as with using things like grammar
checkers (on Word) or internet resources like Wikipedia you need to think very
carefully about how it is being used and what for.
In terms of preparing for seminars, I understand some students are already using it
to ‘summarise’ cases (and other readings). Two things to note. The first is that
ChatGPT really isn’t a good resource; headnotes (found in official reports available
on Westlaw) are already ‘authoritative’ summaries of case law, and will be far more
accurate than ChatGPT. The second is that you need to be able to effectively
evaluative whether the summary you get is accurate, and you can only do this by
reading the case (or book, article etc) yourself and learning the skills of reading and
summarising; these are already key skills in law (and indeed Higher Education) but
looking to the future it is likely that a key lawyer skill will be evaluating the outputs
from GenAI – and you can only do that if you actually learned the skill.
Please also be very careful with using GenAI to summarise areas of law more
generally. The datasets these are based on are predominantly based on US law and
in any case are not from ‘authoritative datasets’ – it may include a lot of opinion and
falsehoods; they often have a ‘stop point’, ie they will not be up to date with the latest
3
, case law etc; the outputs might be misleading, inaccurate or biased; and they have a
tendency to fabricate authorities (known as ‘hallunications’), as a litigant in person
recently discovered when they cited 9 non-existent authorities to the court:
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/ai-hallucinates-nine-helpful-case-authorities/
5118179.article. So again, you need to learn the skills for being able to evaluate any
outputs from GenAI.
For these reason I strongly advise that you develop your legal knowledge and skills
by not using GenAI in preparing for seminars. If you want a summary of cases use
headnotes (via Lexis, Westlaw and VlexJustis) and if you want summaries of the
relevant English law beyond the readings provided the best starting point is nearly
always Halsbury’s Laws of England (available via Lexis). But if you do want to play
with GenAI, fine, but you’ve been warned about its limits – so make sure you
evaluate the outputs by doing the ‘actual’ readings as well!
For more information on the limits of AI (and its possible uses) in law, see the
recently released Guidance for Judicial Office Holders:
https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/artificial-intelligence-ai-judicial-
guidance.
NOTE: For the avoidance of doubt, the use of Generative AI tools to produce text to
be included in the essay is not permitted.
Nick Piška
18 December 2023
4
EQUITY & TRUSTS
SEMINAR WORKSHEETS
SPRING 2024
1
, Guidance on Preparing for Seminars
Below is some guidance on how best to prepare for the seminars and how to use the
seminar worksheets.
Regarding the seminar questions…
The seminar questions are designed to guide your private study (ie reading, note-
taking and thinking). It is strongly recommended that you write full answers to
seminar questions; if you do this you will have a complete set of notes for the
whole module from which to prepare for the exam, and which you can correct and/or
supplement following seminars or when revising.
It is not expected that all questions will be discussed in the seminar; as stated above,
a number of questions are designed to assist private study rather than seminar
discussion.
Finally, be warned: most of the principles, doctrines and remedies studied are
controversial and/or in a state of flux (as is the case in many areas of law), so there
may be more than one way of understanding them. It also means that there often
isn’t a ‘correct answer’ – hence why so many of questions in this area end up in the
Court of Appeal or Supreme Court!
Regarding the lectures…
Module content is provided via a combination of the core readings and the lectures –
it is important you listen to the lectures before the seminar in order to be prepared for
the seminar. Take notes during the lecture (or after if you prefer to listen to a lecture
in all its ‘purity’!). Taking notes does not mean ‘verbatim’, ie don’t try to copy down all
words said because you won’t ‘hear’ what is being said and consequently won’t
‘understand’ what is being said; instead note down what is significant, ie the ‘gist’ of
a point or argument being made. Significant quotes will be provided on the slides so
there is no need to attempt to copy these out. In short: develop your note-taking
skills and be prepared to listen to the development of an argument in the lectures.
Regarding the ‘key cases for noting’…
For most seminars there is a list of ‘key cases for noting’. These are cases that you
should look out for in the lectures, required reading and any further reading
undertaken, making a note of what it’s about and what its relevance is in terms of the
topic. If they don’t come up in the reading, you should look up their significance
either in one of the recommended texts or via the electronic law library (eg Westlaw).
They are cases you are strongly encouraged to read, if not the whole case then at
least the headnote.
2
,Regarding the further readings…
There are numerous suggested further readings; it’s not expected that you’ll read
any of them for preparing for seminars – in some ways they can be understood as
‘footnotes’ to the lectures – but if you find a something of interest (whether from the
lecture, the seminar, or one of the readings) and want to read more on it, this is the
place to start. They are also a good starting point for further reading for the
coursework questions.
Regarding comparative material…
We compare and contrast the approach of other jurisdictions such as Australia and
Canada as a way of critically reflecting on questions of principle and policy. I’m often
asked ‘will this be on the exams?’ My answer is always: anything that is included on
the course could be subject to assessment on the course unless I explicitly state
otherwise. As you can see from the module learning outcomes, above, comparative
material is relevant. So, in short: yes, there could be questions requiring you to
compare and contrast the position in England and Wales with that of Australia and/or
Canada.
Regarding the use of AI…
Clearly Artificial Intelligence, in particular GenerativeAI, is now a ‘thing’ – you will all
no doubt have heard of ChatGPT but there are others available. I can’t police your
use of these in preparing for seminars etc, but just as with using things like grammar
checkers (on Word) or internet resources like Wikipedia you need to think very
carefully about how it is being used and what for.
In terms of preparing for seminars, I understand some students are already using it
to ‘summarise’ cases (and other readings). Two things to note. The first is that
ChatGPT really isn’t a good resource; headnotes (found in official reports available
on Westlaw) are already ‘authoritative’ summaries of case law, and will be far more
accurate than ChatGPT. The second is that you need to be able to effectively
evaluative whether the summary you get is accurate, and you can only do this by
reading the case (or book, article etc) yourself and learning the skills of reading and
summarising; these are already key skills in law (and indeed Higher Education) but
looking to the future it is likely that a key lawyer skill will be evaluating the outputs
from GenAI – and you can only do that if you actually learned the skill.
Please also be very careful with using GenAI to summarise areas of law more
generally. The datasets these are based on are predominantly based on US law and
in any case are not from ‘authoritative datasets’ – it may include a lot of opinion and
falsehoods; they often have a ‘stop point’, ie they will not be up to date with the latest
3
, case law etc; the outputs might be misleading, inaccurate or biased; and they have a
tendency to fabricate authorities (known as ‘hallunications’), as a litigant in person
recently discovered when they cited 9 non-existent authorities to the court:
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/ai-hallucinates-nine-helpful-case-authorities/
5118179.article. So again, you need to learn the skills for being able to evaluate any
outputs from GenAI.
For these reason I strongly advise that you develop your legal knowledge and skills
by not using GenAI in preparing for seminars. If you want a summary of cases use
headnotes (via Lexis, Westlaw and VlexJustis) and if you want summaries of the
relevant English law beyond the readings provided the best starting point is nearly
always Halsbury’s Laws of England (available via Lexis). But if you do want to play
with GenAI, fine, but you’ve been warned about its limits – so make sure you
evaluate the outputs by doing the ‘actual’ readings as well!
For more information on the limits of AI (and its possible uses) in law, see the
recently released Guidance for Judicial Office Holders:
https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/artificial-intelligence-ai-judicial-
guidance.
NOTE: For the avoidance of doubt, the use of Generative AI tools to produce text to
be included in the essay is not permitted.
Nick Piška
18 December 2023
4
