2025 Contract Law Question 5 — LawShortcut Independent Model Answer

Scenario summary

Question 5 is the paper’s reform essay. There are no facts and nobody to advise. What is wanted is a position on whether the present law should be changed, argued through decided cases and legislation rather than asserted.

Three subjects are offered and candidates must take any two: (i) agreements to agree; (ii) economic duress in contract enforcement; and (iii) the enforcement of contracts contrary to public policy.

This model answer takes (ii) economic duress and (iii) public policy: the two with the strongest reform case and the clearest Irish dimension. One is a doctrine Irish law has borrowed but never authoritatively stated, and whose English foundations have just shifted under it. The other has a clean before-and-after story, from a rule turning on how a claim happened to be pleaded to a test asking whether enforcement would damage the integrity of the legal system. Topic (i) is left alone: it is the most defensible status quo of the three.

Candidates are asked to take any two of those three subjects and comment on whether the law governing them stands in need of reform, illustrating the answer with relevant case law or legislation.

This is a LawShortcut scenario summary written in our own words. For the exact examined wording, use the official King’s Inns paper linked above.