LNAT sample essays: plan, opening, and what to write next
Three original Section B prompts with a one-sentence line, a paragraph plan, and a short opening you can compare with your own.
What a sample is for
Section B gives you three prompts and 40 minutes. You choose one and write an argument. A sample is a way to see the moves — a clear line, one job per paragraph, a serious objection — before you produce your own answer. Copying a finished essay does not prepare you for a prompt you have not seen.
The Consortium does not publish a bank of model answers to memorise. The examples below are original practice prompts. Write the rest of each essay yourself, then compare your opening with the short one shown here.
How to read each sample
- Spend two minutes choosing. Pick the prompt you can define and argue, not the one that sounds familiar.
- Write the line in one sentence before you look at the opening below.
- Check that each planned paragraph does a different job.
- Write the full essay in the remaining time. The opening is a comparison, not a script.
Sample 1 — a rule that looks fair
Prompt. Should a school ban phones during the whole day, including breaks?
Line. A whole-day ban is justified only if the school can show that break-time use, not just lesson use, is what damages attention and safety.
- Paragraph 1 defines “ban” (confiscation versus locked pouches) and states the line.
- Paragraph 2 takes lessons: a phone in a lesson splits attention, so a lesson ban is easy to defend.
- Paragraph 3 takes breaks: contact with family, a medical alert, or a long commute can be a real need. A whole-day rule has to answer those cases.
- Paragraph 4 meets the objection that any exception will be abused, and limits the exception (named reasons, not open pockets).
- The close answers the prompt in the same terms you opened with.
Opening to compare. A phone in a lesson is a distraction the school can see. A phone at break is a different question. A whole-day ban treats those as the same problem. It is fair only if break-time use is doing the harm the school claims, and only if pupils who need a phone for safety still have a way to use one.
If your opening names the policy but not the limit, rewrite the first two sentences before you continue.
Sample 2 — a claim about knowledge
Prompt. Is it more important for a law student to read widely, or to read a few texts very carefully?
Line. Careful reading should come first, because a wide reading list that you cannot account for does not give you an argument.
- Define “carefully”: you can state the claim, the reason, and where you disagree.
- Give one reason breadth still matters: you notice when a text is answering a neighbour, not the question in front of you.
- Meet the objection that a narrow reader misses the field. The reply is sequence, not refusal: careful reading of a few texts, then a wider pass.
Opening to compare. Reading widely and reading carefully answer different failures. The first failure is a view so local that you miss the argument next door. The second is a pile of names you cannot explain. For a law student the second failure is worse, because an essay that cites what it cannot use is not an argument.
Sample 3 — a public decision
Prompt. Should cities charge drivers to enter the centre?
Line. A charge is justified when it prices a specific harm — congestion and pollution in a defined zone — and when people who cannot switch to another mode are not simply priced out.
- Separate congestion, pollution, and revenue. A charge that is only a tax has a weaker case than a charge tied to a measured harm.
- Use one concrete case (a delivery round, a night-shift nurse, a shop on the boundary) instead of “some people”.
- Answer the freedom objection: driving is already limited by lights, lanes, and parking. A charge is another limit, and it needs the same kind of reason.
Opening to compare. A city can already stop you driving down a street. A charge is another limit, so it needs a reason of the same kind: a harm the charge reduces, in a place you can point to. If the money is the point, and the harm is vague, the charge is a toll with a cleaner name.
After you write
Mark the draft you wrote, not the opening on this page. Look for a line that disappears after paragraph two, a counterargument you invented in order to knock it down, and a last sentence that changes the question. Then take a new prompt and write again without this page open.