Students who are pursuing their master’s in law get to write a thesis in their final year and get an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge and skills that they have gained during their program. However, when it comes to writing the actual thesis, they always struggle because it requires a lot of effort, especially when they have to conduct the literature review. Understanding literature reviews is easy, but you need some level of knowledge of the subject matter. But what is a literature review?
Well, A literature review is a survey of available scholarly resources on your chosen topic. The purpose of conducting a literature review is to find out the gaps in the existing research. It helps you get an overview of the current knowledge and latest developments, as well as identify the theories and methods. Writing a literature review in a law thesis consists of 5 steps that start with searching the relevant sources to writing it on paper in a well-organised manner. A literature review not only helps to summarise the resources, but it also helps with the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the existing knowledge on that topic.
In this comprehensive blog, we will discuss how to write a literature review in a step-by-step manner. However, it can be a daunting task to compile a literature review, but with our expert guide, it’ll be easier for you. For more tips and tricks, you can connect with law professionals by getting online law thesis writing help and get a personalised approach and tailored solutions. Let’s get started.
What Is Literature Review?
When you start your thesis writing, you start your research on a chosen topic, and literature reviews are often found at the beginning of that research process. A literature review is a very crucial part of the research, which helps to analyse the current knowledge of the topic that you are researching. It is the foundation of your research, and it’s not possible that you conduct the whole process in one take, but it shows that you have researched and read enough resources for your subject matter.
Defining the term in simple words, it is a review essay and a brief knowledge of available research. Remember that it’s not about listing all the resources and authors with their opinions; it’s about a detailed overview of that particular field of study. A literature review includes defining various literature, offering different opinions on important matters, and showing where these opinions change and are challenged. Your literature review must include a deep analysis of each work, not only a basic summary of the resources. It’s not just part of your thesis writing; it shows how your research fits and contributes to the area of your study.
A Literature Review: How Long Should It Be?
A literature review should not be more than 25% on average. The format of your thesis and the resources you have access to, however, will determine this. The following enquiries ought to be made of every article for determining inclusion and exclusion criteria: Is it acceptable, pertinent, or helpful?
This will enable you to maintain the review’s conciseness and topical relevance. It could be worthwhile to reconsider your research question to focus on the topic if you believe that the literature is insufficient and unsolvable.
Steps to Write A Literature Review
The literature reviews that appear at the start of research papers may be familiar to you. This is because the literature review demonstrates the researchers’ current research status and points out any gaps in the body of knowledge. By addressing these gaps, the researchers help to advance our understanding of the subject. Let’s discover law thesis writing tips.
Step 1: Search for Pertinent Literature
You must have a well-defined topic before you start looking for the resources. When writing a literature review for your research paper, you will look for the work that addresses the aims and objectives of your research study.
You must decide on a focus and formulate a main topic to guide your search. If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone task, this question must be possible to be answered without gathering original data, in contrast to a research question. Based on an analysis of previous articles, you ought to be able to respond.
Step 2: Assess and Choose Sources
You will need to determine which sources are more pertinent to your research question since you probably won’t have time to read all that has been published about the topic. Consider the following for every publication:
- What problem or question is the author attempting to address?
- What are the primary concepts and their meanings?
- Which theories, models, and techniques are most important? Does the study employ well-known frameworks or adopt a novel strategy?
- What are the results and conclusions of the study?
- What connections exist between the publication and other works of literature in the field?
- Does it confirm, add to, or challenge existing knowledge?
- In what ways does the publication advance your knowledge of the subject? What are its main
conclusions and points of contention? - What are the research’s advantages and weaknesses?
Verify that the resources you use are trustworthy and that you have read any significant theories or groundbreaking research in your field of study.
Step 3: Determine the Topics, Arguments, and Gaps
To organise your literature review’s argument, you must understand the connections and linkages among the sources you have read. You can use your reading and notes to look up the following.
- Patterns and trends (in philosophy, methodology, or outcomes): Do particular strategies gain or lose traction over time?
- Themes: certain queries or ideas appear repeatedly in the literature?
- Conflicts, disputes, and inconsistencies: Where do sources diverge?
- Pivotal Publications: Important findings or hypotheses that altered the course of the discipline are considered pivotal publications.
- Gaps: What is lacking from the literature are known as gaps. Are there any shortcomings that require attention?
This step will help you structure your literature review and, if required, show how your research will contribute to the state of knowledge.
Step 4: Describe the Format
A literature review’s body can be organised in several ways. You should have a broad idea of your approach before you start writing. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine different strategies.
1. Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the topic’s development across time. However, if you choose to employ this method, be careful to summarise materials in chronological order rather than merely listing them.
Examine the trends, turning points, and significant conversations that have shaped the field’s development. Describe how and why you believe specific developments occur.
2. Thematic
If you have found some recurring significant themes, you can break up your literature study into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.
3. Methodological
If your sources originate from multiple fields or disciplines that use a variety of research methods, you might wish to compare the results and conclusions that come from different methodologies.
4. Theoretical
A literature review is often the first step in developing a theoretical framework. It can be used to discuss various models, theories, and definitions of key terminology.
You could combine multiple theoretical concepts or make a case for the application of a certain theoretical approach to provide a framework for your study.
Step 5: Compose Your Review of the Literature
Like any other academic paper, your literature review should have an introduction, a body paragraph, and a conclusion. What you include in each will depend on the purpose of your literature review.
1. Introduction
Your literature review should start with a clear statement of its purpose.
If you are preparing a literature review as part of your thesis, briefly summarise the academic background and repeat your key argument and research question.
You might draw attention to the gap in the literature and stress how current the subject is.
2. Body Paragraphs
Depending on its length, your literature review’s body might need to be broken up into subsections. There may be distinct subheadings for each theme, period, or analytical method. Be sure to follow these guidelines when writing:
- Recap and synthesise
- Examine and interpret
- Assess critically
- Write in paragraphs that are well structured.
Conclusion
In your conclusion, you ought to emphasise the significance of the primary inference you made from the literature.
If the literature review is part of your thesis, either repeat how your study closes knowledge gaps and offers new insights, or discuss how you have used existing ideas and procedures to construct a framework for your research. This can take you directly to the section on your methods.
Wrapping It Up
Mastering the discipline of writing a literature review is a crucial component of a research paper since it helps readers understand the work. You must include a literary review when creating a research paper since, without one, your research paper would be lacking so much.
We hope that after reading this thorough blog, you will write your next literature review with assurance and fewer doubts. Additionally, if you still need assistance with your thesis writing and are not quite ready to write it on your own, then we recommend getting some online thesis writing help from professionals and letting them guide you through your entire writing journey.
