Sherlock, Watson and Legal Essay Writing

[Scotland Yard detective]: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
[Scotland Yard detective]: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

In his short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle presents his protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, with a seemingly impenetrable mystery. Silver Blaze, a famous race horse, disappears on the eve of an important race, and its trainer is found murdered. Scotland Yard arrests a bookmaker as the primary suspect, but Holmes is not convinced.

After a meandering and captivating narration, a key element that helps Holmes reach a solution is the "curious incident of the dog in the night-time". The dog that was present in the scene at the time of the murder did not bark. As Holmes explained, he immediately grasped the significance of its silence. The only possible inference was that the murderer was someone the dog knew well. The mystery was soon solved and the horse safely returned to its owner.

What inference can we, now, draw from this story in relation to legal essay writing?

In my view, the key takeaway here is the need to pay attention to negative cues. The average student, and person for that matter, does not generally heed negative cues. Instead of focusing on the things that should have happened, but did not happen, we tend to focus on "positive" information, namely on what actually happened.

This perfectly natural tendency might be limiting our essay writing progress. Using the modus cogitandi of Sherlock Holmes, we could mobilise our imagination in order to pay attention to what is missing.

For instance: what is the essay question not asking? What information is missing from the essay prompt? Was this omitted on purpose? Is it, or could it be argued to be, significant? Furthermore, what is this secondary source (e.g. a monograph) not mentioning? What did the Supreme Court judges not comment on? What negative cues can we use in order to construct a more compelling argument?

Sometimes, absence can be as significant as presence. Dr Watson had complimented Holmes on his masterful deductions by saying that he had rendered detection as near an exact science as it ever would be rendered in this world. It is worth examining what we stand to gain by applying a similar line of reasoning to legal essay writing. Good luck and bon courage!