Assignment 1: Instructions
This page contains the detailed instructions provided by the Course Coordinator Lucas Jones for Assignment 1 within the course Researching Law & Technology (RLT) of the LL.M. Law & Technology at Tilburg Law School (Tilburg University).
Deadline: 20 September 2026
Instructions:
1: You must in some way present, explain, and justify the existence of a specific ‘researchable legal problem’ that should be addressed. This can be done in any format you choose. For example, some students may wish to make a short video presentation, while some may wish to write a memo or text-based narrative, and others may choose to make an in-depth slide deck, or anything else creative. While it can be presented in the format of your choice, it must be substantial work that is assessable according to the rubric.
2: You must also do peer review of the submissions of 3 other students in your tutorial group. These will be assigned to you on Canvas after the deadline for submitting the presented topic. This peer review will be done according to the rubric.
This demonstrates your ability to assess the novelty, utility, and feasibility of a research project.
Both the presentation and peer review are necessary for receiving a pass on the assignment. Your presentation is what will be assessed as a pass or fail. Your peer review is not assessed in the final grade but is just a mandatory prerequisite.
Clarification of terms:
‘Substantial presentation’
This is important for assessing the threshold for when an assignment would be deemed sufficient or insufficient. Since the format of the assignment is your choice, sufficiency is not necessarily based upon word count, but on the degree to which the content is deemed ‘substantial’ and adequately justifies a ‘researchable legal problem that should be addressed’.
To be substantial, the work must (as comprehensively as possible) outline and justify what is defined below as a ‘researchable legal problem that should be addressed’. In theory, a sufficient assignment would therefore provide a very clear basis for the introduction of a thesis (not a general thesis topic realm, but an actual concrete thesis). If brief descriptive statements are made, instead of in-depth argumentation, it may be unlikely that the work is sufficiently substantial.
Use academic and legal literature, and cite your sources appropriately (using OSCOLA style, if the submission is text-based).
‘Researchable legal problem that should be addressed’
Researchable? Must be feasible in scope - the problem must be one that should be feasible to research and answer within the domains of a master thesis.
Legal? Is the problem really a legal one? - if you are asking how AI can be used to solve a social issue, that is not legal.
Problem? Is there really a problem? - Just because you are talking about technology, the law, or social concerns, that doesn’t mean that the research project is directly targeting a specific problem. E.G. If you want to analyze how sufficient the law is at tackling a certain issue, you must first demonstrate why exactly you have reason to believe that there is a specific problem here.
Should be addressed? The problem must be one that relates to a gap in knowledge/literature and therefore can be argued as a problem that should be addressed via further research.
It is not necessary that the presented legal problem aligns with your chosen thesis theme, however it may benefit you if this is the case.
Rubric for assessment and peer review:
The below rubric is used both by your mentor to assess your presentation, and also by you as you conduct peer review on your fellow students.
Presentation
- Is the work presented clearly, in a manner that is well-structured and easy to understand?
- How effectively are the ideas presented as a whole, in their format/presentation?
Language
- Are the relevant concepts introduced in a way that is clear to the average reader?
- Is the argumentation concrete and convincing?
- To what extent are arguments embedded in legal and academic literature?
Novelty
- Is the problem oriented towards an identified gap in existing knowledge?
- To what extent has the problem already been addressed in academic literature?
Feasibility
- How sufficiently narrow and concrete is the scope of research?
- How manageable would the scope of analyzing this problem be within the limitations of a 12,500 word master thesis?
© 2026 Ester Sofia Fuligni
[Draft] Research Proposal | LL.M. Law & Technology | Track Privacy and Security | Tilburg Law School
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