Is It Illegal To Pay Someone To Write an Essay?

Where there’s a need, there’s an opportunity to help, and the business of providing essay writing services has proven this brilliantly.

Students, from high school to post-graduate, have found a life-saving solution to their academic writing problems, in custom writing services. But there’s always that one question that comes to everyone’s mind before opting to pay for custom essays: Are these services even legal?

According to leading essay writing service review blog, IHateWritingEssays, these companies are completely risk-free and legal to use, as long as they work within the legal system and follow existing laws. But there are certain caveats to this. For instance, some universities forbid students from using said services, and anyone who gets caught will either be suspended or worse, expelled from school.

Legally getting help from essay writing services is never the issue here, but students are required to be smarter and more cautious in choosing them. Here’s why:

Essay Writing Services Are Legal – But There’s a Catch

There’s nothing to worry about the legal aspect of using essay writing services. After all, hiring a professional writer is no different from working with a tutor or ghostwriter. Just like these services, there are no provisions that prohibit students from getting the academic help they need.

However, countries like Australia have recently administered legislation that carries heavy sanctions to agencies and individuals that offer essay writing services to students. With that, essay writing services are now banned from doing business within the country.

University ministers in the UK are also urging for this type of services to be outlawed in the country. But at the time of writing, no law has yet been passed that prohibits students in the UK from using essay writing services.

Demand Is Greater Than the Risk

Whether we like it or not, more and more countries are proposing to ban essay writing services. But other than Australia and the UK, no other country has passed a law that forbids the use of said services – not even the US. Because the fact of the matter is, governments and academic institutions are aware that students need all the help they can get to achieve academic success.

So what role do essay writing services play in this? It’s quite simple. Legitimate essay writing companies strongly condone academic cheating and so, they have an important condition that students must follow before using their services. These companies only provide academic writing assistance, not finished papers. In short, purchased papers must be used solely as a supporting material or reference for when a student creates their own essay. These companies have strict Honor Code and anti-plagiarism policies that customers must adhere to. Anyone who gets caught violating their terms will be banned from using their services.

How to Spot an Illegal Essay Writing Service

Sadly, not all academic writing services have the students’ best interests at heart. Choose the wrong company and you could compromise your grades and academic prospects. If you’re considering paying someone to write an essay, make sure you’re working with a reputable company. Below are some tell-tale signs of an illegal essay writing service:

Company has no license number and registered address on their website
Writing services are offered at dirt-cheap prices (anything less than $10 per page is a red flag)
Most of their writers are non-native English speakers (particularly from countries like Kenya and India)
Website does not provide essay samples from their writers
Website has no privacy policy
Company has a record of reselling papers
No round-the-clock customer support
No way for students to directly communicate with their assigned writer

How to Find a Legitimate Essay Writing Service

Now that you already know what to do, it’s time to find a suitable essay writing service. Of course, what better way to find out a company’s credibility than to read reviews from customers?

The problem is, not all reviews you see online are trustworthy. So how can you find reviews you can trust? Here’s what you need to do:

Check the volume of reviews.

A simple Google search just won’t cut it. To determine an essay writing service’s credibility, you need to find out how often they receive customer feedback.

You may notice that some reviews have been published a long time ago, with no recent updates. Or worse, they only have a handful of reviews on trusted independent platforms like SiteJabber and TrustPilot. There could be two reasons for the lack of reviews: The website has either abandoned their services and has an outdated website or they don’t get a lot of customers due to poor quality. If this is the case, you’re probably better off doing your business elsewhere.

Find out if they’re real or fake.

When it comes to finding a trusted essay writing service, you need critical thinking.

Remember: Legitimate companies will be unbiased. The problem with some reviews is that they glorify a writing service in all aspects. The best writers, best price, best guarantees, best customer services. Best, best, best!

The competition in the writing service industry is fierce. Sure, there are a handful of great services out there, but it’s almost impossible to find the perfect one in every single aspect. So the next time you find a review that’s unrealistically positive or too good to be true, chances are it’s fake.

The same can be said for overly negative reviews. Some of these so-called “customer feedback” will only list down negative claims about a service. The thing is, it’s very rare for an essay writing company to stay in business if they fail that hard. So if you notice unhealthy amounts of extremely negative reviews about a company, you’re probably looking at biased reviews or an ongoing smear campaign from rival companies that only want to talk trash about the competition.

Look for Real Experience

The best reviews are those that are based on personal experience. However, students aren’t always willing to share their own opinions. Oftentimes they’re more interested in reading reviews online and if they like what they see, then they probably won’t bother going from one review site to another to share positive feedback. But if they’re disappointed, they’ll be prompted to warn others against ordering from a certain essay writing service.

If you’re new to ordering a custom essay, you’ll want to see customer experiences not only in the company’s website, but also in third-party review sites and blogs. You can also read customer experiences on platforms like Reddit, where students and freelancers have more freedom to write anything and talk about their personal experience working with an essay writing service.