Students treat LAWS121 as an introduction, which is what its title promises. Structurally it is something else.
Students treat LAWS121 as an introduction, which is what its title promises. Structurally it is something else. It is open-entry, the following two law courses are closed until you pass it, and your grades across those first three courses decide whether you continue into second-year Law at all. That makes the friendliest-sounding course in the degree the one carrying the most consequence, and it changes how you should approach the writing from week one. Below is how MAAS mentors read a course built like this.
Author: MAAS Editorial Team · Reviewed by a Senior Law mentor (PhD, Law)
Last updated: 2026-08-12
Category: writing-tips
What is the course, and where does it sit?
Direct answer: At Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, LAWS121 is Introduction to the New Zealand Legal System, a 20-point course taught in the first trimester. It is one of four compulsory 100-level courses in the Bachelor of Laws, alongside LAWS122 Introduction to Case Law, LAWS123 Introduction to Statute Law and MAOR126 He Herenga Tāngata. LAWS121 is open to anyone holding University Entrance, subject to room capacity, and a pass in it is the prerequisite for both LAWS122 and LAWS123.
Evidence: The faculty publishes this structure openly. The LLB is a four-year, 480-point degree of 21 law courses, and the enrolment pages state that entry into second-year Law requires passing LAWS121, 122 and 123, with selection giving weight to your first-year law results.
Example: A student treated first trimester as a settling-in period, passed comfortably, and then discovered that comfortable passes were competing against a cohort where the selection was made on grades rather than on completion. Nothing had gone wrong academically. The strategic picture had simply been invisible to him.
Why does the sequencing matter more than the content?
Direct answer: Because the three 100-level law courses are not three separate subjects. They are one argument split across a year: LAWS121 gives you the system, LAWS122 gives you how judges reason within it, and LAWS123 gives you how legislation works and how it is interpreted. If you learn LAWS121 as a list of institutions, the next two courses have nothing to attach to.
| How students approach LAWS121 | What it produces later | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Memorise the court hierarchy | Can name courts, cannot explain why a decision binds | Learn hierarchy as the mechanism that makes precedent work |
| Treat the Treaty content as background | Struggles when the Treaty appears in Public Law | Treat it as a live source of legal argument |
| Treat tikanga as cultural context | Cannot engage when tikanga appears as law | Treat it as a legal system with its own logic |
| Learn constitutional arrangements as facts | Cannot argue about them | Ask what each arrangement constrains, and what it does not |
Evidence: The faculty describes the first year as covering critical, theoretical and cultural perspectives on the legal system, legislation and the processes of drafting and interpretation, case law and how precedent works, and the social context of why judges decide as they do. That last item is the giveaway. A course that asks why judges decide as they do is not asking you to memorise what they decided.
Example: Asked why a High Court judge followed an earlier Court of Appeal decision she plainly disliked, a weaker answer said that lower courts must follow higher ones. A stronger one said the same thing, then explained what that rule buys the system and what it costs in that particular case.
What is the tikanga Māori component, and why is it not optional context?
Direct answer: It is law. New Zealand legal education now treats tikanga Māori as a source of legal rights and obligations rather than as cultural background, and your writing needs to reflect that or it will read as a category error.
Evidence: This is a formal change, not a stylistic preference. The New Zealand Council of Legal Education resolved that te ao Māori and tikanga Māori would be taught as core content within the LLB, with requirements applying from 1 January 2025 that include teaching and assessment of tikanga relevant to each core subject, and tikanga taught as a compulsory subject in its own right. Te Herenga Waka has integrated tikanga into first-year teaching since 2021. The scholarly ground is older still. Ruru (2018) sets out the case for an enhanced role for first laws, the laws of Indigenous peoples, within contemporary settler legal systems. Jones (2009) draws a distinction that is directly useful in assessment, separating Indigenous legal issues from Indigenous perspectives on the law and from Indigenous law itself, and argues that these achieve different objectives and must be delivered differently.
Example: Two students wrote on the same problem. The first mentioned tikanga in a closing paragraph about cultural sensitivity. The second used Jones's distinction explicitly, identified which of the three categories the question was actually about, and analysed accordingly. Only the second answered the question.
How should you write about the Treaty of Waitangi?
Direct answer: As a legal instrument with a contested interpretive history, not as a historical event that the course happens to mention. The recurring first-year error is describing what the Treaty says and treating the description as the analysis.
Evidence: Jones (2009) illustrates the problem with an account from his own first year. He had written approvingly about a landmark Court of Appeal decision on the principles of the Treaty, and his mother asked why the court had used principles at all rather than giving effect to the words, which set out the agreement plainly. Her question, he observes, showed him that there could be a difference between the law taught at law school and the experience and perspective of the people that law affects. That gap is exactly what a strong first-year answer engages with, and it is available to you without any claim to speak for anyone.
Example: A student wrote that the Treaty exists in two texts that do not say the same thing, then stopped. The stronger version of the same paragraph asked what follows legally from that fact: which text a court works from, why the principles doctrine developed, and what that doctrine does and does not deliver.
What does the writing actually have to do?
Direct answer: It has to argue, not report. First-year law assessment rewards a position defended against the strongest counter-position, and most first submissions instead summarise the material accurately and stop.
Evidence: The course sits at the front of a degree whose whole method is adversarial. Every later course will ask what the other side would say. Starting that habit in LAWS121 costs nothing and compounds; starting it in second year means competing against people who already have it.
Example: An essay on parliamentary sovereignty set out the orthodox position clearly and comprehensively. It received a solid mark and no more. The version that would have moved up stated the same orthodoxy, then asked what work the doctrine is doing in a country without a supreme constitutional document, and what the strongest argument against it looks like.
How should international students handle the local material?
Direct answer: Directly, and early. A significant amount of LAWS121 assumes background that students schooled in New Zealand absorbed before university, and the honest move is to build that background deliberately rather than hoping it accumulates.
Evidence: The course integrates tikanga Māori concepts and expects students to apply them appropriately in legal argument. Concepts of this kind cannot be picked up from a lecture slide, and treating them as vocabulary to be deployed produces writing that markers recognise immediately as surface-level. Wallace (2024) makes the related point that tikanga discussed inside a Western legal classroom is a contextualised version rather than an authentic manifestation, and that a full understanding is experiential.
Example: A student from overseas built a running glossary in her first three weeks, not of definitions but of what each concept does in an argument. By mid-trimester she was writing about relationships and obligations rather than translating terms, and the difference showed in her marks.
A practical order of work
- Read the enrolment requirements for second-year Law in week one, not in week ten. Know what you are being selected on.
- Build the three 100-level courses as one structure. Keep one running document connecting system, case law and statute.
- For every institution you learn, write one line on what it constrains and one line on what it cannot reach.
- Practise stating the strongest opposing argument before you write your own conclusion.
- Treat tikanga content as law with its own internal logic, and use Jones's three categories to work out which kind of content a question is asking about.
- Read your course outline for the terms requirement and assessment structure. It is the primary document, and it is distributed in week one for a reason.
Frequently asked questions
Is LAWS121 hard to pass?
Passing is not usually the difficulty. The pressure comes from the fact that your grade contributes to selection into second-year Law, so the practical target is higher than a pass, and the students around you know it.
Do I need to be fluent in te reo Māori?
No. What is expected is that you engage with tikanga concepts as legal concepts and use them accurately, rather than avoiding them or treating them decoratively.
How different is LAWS121 from LAWS122 and LAWS123?
They divide the work. LAWS121 gives you the system as a whole, LAWS122 is case law and precedent reasoning, and LAWS123 is statute and interpretation. Both later courses require a pass in LAWS121 first.
Can I take LAWS121 without committing to the whole LLB?
It is open-entry, so enrolment is possible subject to capacity, and some students take it alongside another degree. Continuing into second-year Law is the selective step, not the first course.
Should I be citing academic articles in first-year assignments?
Follow your course outline. Where secondary sources are invited, use them to support claims about how the law has developed or is contested, and keep primary materials doing the work of stating what the law is.
Where MAAS fits
MAAS mentors work alongside law students rather than in place of them. In a first-year course, the most useful sessions are usually the plainest ones: reading your draft to find where a description has been left standing in place of an argument, checking that you have engaged with the strongest counter-position rather than a convenient one, and making sure the tikanga material in your answer is doing legal work rather than sitting in a closing paragraph. The writing stays yours. If that is useful, our academic support service and our tutoring service are the two places to start.
References
Jones, C. (2009). Indigenous legal issues, Indigenous perspectives and Indigenous law in the New Zealand LLB curriculum. Legal Education Review, 19(2). https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6225
Ruru, J. (2018). First laws: Tikanga Māori in/and the law. Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 49(2), 211–228. https://doi.org/10.26686/vuwlr.v49i2.5321
Wallace, C. (2024, September). Tikanga and legal education. Māori Law Review. https://maorilawreview.co.nz/2024/09/tikanga-and-legal-education-christie-wallace/
Tools & resources
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. (2026). LAWS121 Introduction to New Zealand Legal System. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/courses/laws/121/2026
New Zealand Law Society. (2024, June 13). The case for tikanga Māori: The LLB degree curriculum in a contemporary context. https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/news/publications/lawtalk/lawtalk-issue-958/the-case-for-tikanga-maori/