Electives: International Commercial Law (ICL) and Private Client

So I have been doing electives for a good three weeks now and although the initial feeling post exams was "I CAN'T GO ON!!" I am now happily settled into the new modules. The countdown is on for the end of the LPC with only nine teaching weeks in total for the electives and we have now completed three of them. 

ICL so far has been a real go over of contract law and a smidge of EU law too. I'm finding it very interesting. We have largely been covering commercial contracts for the sale of goods between businesses including express/implied terms and remedies - all the things you would expect from a module basing itself on contract law! In terms of amounts of work - ICL is fairly tough going with a lot of prep for each module and unfortunately it is not prep that I feel you can get away with not doing. 

I was always going to love private client because it is the area that I am involved in at work. For that reason alone most weeks I feel quite familiar and comfortable. On top of that, the module has a real focus on tax - mainly Inheritance Tax so far - and if you can remember from my tax blog waaaayyyy back during BLP, I LOVE TAX! So you can consider me a very happy bunny.

Speaking of bunnies, the Easter break is here. I can't quite believe that I am saying this but (and yes I know we are only three mere weeks in) I have managed to remain extremely organised with my work so far. I have completed all the prep for each week AND I have typed my notes after each class for consolidation. And you know what that means? I actually get to have a break this Easter! Hoorah! We get two golden weeks off and I have lots of lovely things planned including redeeming the spa voucher my fantastic best friend bought me for my birthday wayyy back before Christmas, plenty of running sessions in preparation for my upcoming half marathon (crazy I know), a Great British Bake Off night with my favourite gang of girls and all things I like to call "life admin" - dentist, doctors, haircut etc. And then the second week I'm off to Center Parcs for an action packed week of adventures. 

Yay for Easter!

RESULTS: Advocacy and Drafting

Second blog in one day - buses eh? But this was a necessary one because today at 2pm we received our advocacy and drafting results. The only one that I really REALLY wanted to pass was advocacy, purely because doing that exam again is not exactly appealing, but lets be honest, nobody ever wants to fail any exam or piece of assessment. 

I actively put off opening results by watching the latest episode of The Following recorded on my sky box (anyone who hasn't seen The Following - it is bloody amazing, where have you been?). The episode finished at 2:20 by which point my phone was inundated with glorious "I PASSED!" messages and a foreboding silence from a few individuals. Obviously, my silence was probably taken to mean that I had failed also! 

As with pretty much every other stressful aspect in my life I develop rituals to ease the tension. Basically, exam results involve - being alone, putting on a feel good song (my thinking here being that, should the results be awful, the song may reduce the possibility of me launching myself out of the window), and then I hover the pointer over the 'open' button. Close the window. Reopen the window and sign back in. Hover. Check Facebook. Hover. Check my phone. Eventually log in and peep through my fingers. 

Drafting - Competent

Advocacy - Competent

Hoorah! And now on with the day :D

Litigation, Property and Conduct exams - oh and drafting!

Yet another long gap since my last post. As you can imagine, it is winding down time at uni which means spare time is in short supply. And you will see from the title is has been a busy few weeks!

I can hardly believe that three weeks YES THREE WEEKS(!) has passed since the last exam of the most recent exam period. Our final sessions in litigation and property (PLP) were on 5 February and we had two free weeks to cram in revision for both subjects plus revision for conduct - more about that later. But first, the drafting assessment was also due on 5 February. This assessment was sent to us a little over three weeks before the due date. It is one of the only assessments, along with Practical Legal Research (PLR), which constitutes university type "coursework" in which you are required to do the work at home and submit a written piece. This year, the drafting was in three sections which a question in each. We were required to test different drafting skills, i.e. actually drafting a clause, critiquing drafting. The sections related one each to business law, civil litigation and property - so a word of warning for you fair part timers who, like me, believed that after the business exam the previous year you wouldn't catch a sniff of business law until at least a TC, business law comes back with avengeance. I suppose it wasn't really that bad as far as assessments go but I would definitely recommend Lexis PSL as a bank for precedents (in addition to PLC of course!) as there was a very handy precedent on there which was unmatched on PLC and sadly many students didn't find it and had to struggle with the rather unworkable PLC version. 

The usual hum of tension was buzzing around uni on the 5th. Hand in date. We also had final classes so, rightly or wrongly, the breaks in between were times for us to hurriedly rush to the PC labs to amend/rewrite/check/renumber/reparagraph/have-mini-breakdowns. I myself ended up printing my assessment four times due to casual checking and noticing errors. I dread to think how many I may have missed! I could have reread it a hundred times. We did the usual ritual of handing in and then after we felt like criminals as we carefully discussed our submissions - for those of you who don't know you're not allowed to discuss the written assessments before or even after the deadline. Inevitably this rule is ditched as soon as the assessment has been submitted. There were a few people who looked positively sick in these discussions, having likely answered a question wrong and I suppose that is one reason alone to avoid the post- assessment analysis.

The day ended, we headed to our respective homes aware that our little gang of eleven had finished its last ever day of classes together. It has been an extremely tiring and testing eighteen months and a period in my life that has been made all the more bearable, hell, even enjoyable, for having those people as classmates. But we looked onwards to exams and then electives. 

Ahhhhhhh the exams.

Civil Litigation

In hindsight, my ingenious idea of waking up at 4:30 every exam morning to arrive at Guildford for 7am was flipping ridiculous. Civil was up first, on 24 February and I felt surprisingly 'buzzy'. Probably the early start and copious amounts of caffeine. It is a 3.5 hour paper with the writing skill also being a part of the assessment. I started fairly well and none of the questions seemed monstrous but around the two hour mark the tiredness was beginning to take its toll and my mind was becoming a tad sluggish. Some water and a snack helped the situation and I finished the paper feeling seriously concerned only about one question and the final question which I only partly answered due to running out of time. I am quietly confident that this can at least get me a pass - mainly because resitting civil litigation would be hellish!

Criminal Litigation

The criminal exam was two days later on 26 February. This was a 1 hour paper with advanced reading - information emailed to you two weeks before that you can annotate and take into the exam. Our advanced reading relating to a gentleman who had been arrested for ABH and some witness statements. The university tell you not to use this as a tool to guess questions but it is hard not to at least surmise at what the paper will include. There were five Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and it turned out two written questions. I had used the information to write up bullet points of things to take into account, bearing the information in mind, when making his bail application etc. Luckily for me, something that I had prepared came up and with a little tweaking to account for the new information presented in the exam paper I think my answers were good enough to pass. Phew! 

I must say that by this point in the week I was beginning to feel the effects of two 4:30am starts, 7am starts on the days off with packed revision and 11pm bedtimes. 

Property Law and Practice (PLP)

You may remember that I managed, somehow, to achieve 74 in the mock for PLP with absolutely no revision. For that reason alone I felt that with revision a distinction should be in my grasp for the real thing. This exam should have been one of my best, one that I held the most confidence for, one that I felt the most prepared. 

My final 4:30 start for the week killed me. I felt genuinely awful, actually unwell. When I arrived at uni I did the usual ritual of going to the PC labs to print the notes I had typed at home and then emailed to my account. I printed of the Test and Feedback exercises for each week (they are all MCQs so generally are a good aid for the exam MCQs) and headed off to the common room for some light reading of the advanced reading. The property advanced reading consisted of a 43 page lease. It was to be the main focus of all the lease questions, taking up 40% of the exam,  and so was rather important. Looking back I don't feel that I was nearly prepped enough in terms of the advanced reading and had not completed any tasks in relation to the specific provisions of that lease, although I had heavily annotated it. 

With an hour to go until the 9:30am start I was still feeling weird. Fuzzy headed and a bit shaky, a little nauseous. Strange. The time passed and the exam started and I remember reading the front of the paper with the little disclaimer "By sitting this exam you are confirming that  you are fit to sit" or whatever it says. 

I had decided to leave the 20 MCQs until last. They were mainly on unregistered land and not my cup of tea at all. I moved straight to the written questions on freehold land. 

They were fairly okay. My start was questionable at best and my head still felt hot and fuzzy, but I gained my stride and was soon moving to the leasehold questions which were largely uncomplicated. 

I had worked out to the second how many minutes I had per mark and then per question. I finished the written exercises bang on time and began the MCQs. 

LOTS of reading. LOTS of processing of information. My brain was completely frazzled and I struggled enormously. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to have to read and reread and reread information and retain none of it. I muddled through but I expect to have little over 7/20 on those questions - heavily affecting my final grade. 

Conduct

Conduct is a 'pervasive' subject, hence why you have never seen a blog about it. It is meant to be covered in all areas and relates to the Solicitors Regulation Authority Code of Conduct - basically how solicitors should behave. 

It is a two hour paper, all MCQs and was on the Thursday 6th March - a nice big gap after the incredibly long week of core exams previous. 

The paper was not particularly taxing although I am not saying I aced it. The problem with MCQs is that you can often get yourself down to two answers and be sure that either could be right and so you have a 50/50 chance. Luckily, it is a Competent/Not Competent paper so I am hoping I have done enough to get 50% at least!

Results estimates:

• CIVIL LITIGATION                                  62%
• CRIMINAL LITIGATION                        70%

(giving 64% for litigation overall)

• PROPERTY LAW AND PRACTICE      65%
• CONDUCT                                               COMPETENT

Mocks and the Advocacy Exam

Oh dear… somebody hasn't been blogging for a while. I am sure any students out there know how busy December is for us all *tiny violins* and I have also been training for my first half marathon so unfortunately, with all the best will in the world, the blog did indeed fall by the wayside. 

But no more! I hope to be back and blogging from this point onwards. Obviously with only six months remaining of the LPC it would be a shame not to see it through to the end so I am 100% back. 

So let us begin with a round up…

Civil Litigation and Property mock exams

November not only held my birthday but mock exams. The mock exams were held just one week after my advocacy practice assessment, on a Wednesday and during what would have been our workshops for that module. I am not going to lie, my preparation for the mocks this year fell far below the standard I set for myself for the BLP mock one year previous. For BLP I had prepared crib sheets for all the workshops we had done prior to the mock and was serious about my revision. 

For the civ lit and property mocks no such crib sheets were prepared. And revision was minimal. To be honest it was a general theme! Having had no actual time off from the course to revise it just seemed impossible to be as ready as we all would have liked. 

We sat the exams and from the mark sheets I think most of us were confident we had at least passed which was the main thing. The course continued and mocks were swiftly forgotten. 

Advocacy Assessment

The real advocacy assessment was held on the final day of term, the 18th December, and was the only thing we had that day. In addition to this we were also informed that our mock exam papers would be ready for collection after we had done our assessments. Hoorah…

My assessment was at 15:15 which, given how far away I live, suited me just fine. I turned up an hour early looking my best and feeling ridiculously calm! The practice assessment had gone smoothly and I thought that ten minutes of talking for an exam was going to be a breeze. After a quick run through in one of the quiet rooms I felt ready and made my way to student services to find out my room allocation (we were told to arrive at student services fifteen minutes prior to the assessment to collect this). 

Student services was filled with around twenty nervous looking students all lined up to collect their numbers. My stomach dropped and I finally felt the first twinges of nerves. I collected my number and found my room. My opponent was waiting outside and I promptly took down her name while she babbled about how nervous she was. Why is it that nerves are contagious? My stomach dropped for the second time. 

In the advocacy literature we are told that: once you enter the exam room you are in "court room conditions" and the assessment has begun. This effectively means, don't go chatting to the assessor like they are your best pal, they are assessing you from the start. So imagine our surprise when our assessor invited us in and begun talking to us, telling us what she would be doing, where she wanted us to sit, told us of time limits and warnings. I was utterly thrown. My stomach dropped for the third time. And then it began.

I introduced myself and my partner perfectly fine. I went to take a breath to begin the case introductions and it hitched in my throat. The nerves had hit full and fast and I suddenly wondered if I would even be able to talk again. I am sure this has happened to almost everyone and for that reason you will all know that, yes, you do talk again. The first two minutes were touch and go, I felt awful! But I regained my stride and composure and by the time I was taking the "judge" through the bundle my voice had returned some confidence and my breathing had relaxed. I finished without a time warning and the adrenaline buzz of finishing felt amazing!

My partner began her submissions and I hate to say it but she really struggled. I hated having to sit and listen to her and realised how she had probably felt during the first part of mine. Unfortunately, she did receive a time warning and then committed the cardinal sin of abandoning her bundle right where she was and going straight to her concluding submissions. When you receive a time warning you have exceeded the ten allotted minutes for your submissions but will generally be allowed a further two before you are completely cut off. This should allow you to (quickly) finish the bundle and then conclude. Abandoning the bundle, at any point, is a terrible terrible idea. 

The time warning put her off completely and her conclusions were shaky at best. I managed to make a further point and then the judge decided that my partner had "won". This time I managed to respond to costs and I "won" that element of the hearing. 

We quickly left - having finished much earlier than the other students. As we left the building we whispered how we thought it might have gone and my opponent agreed that I had been nervous, in fact she had seen me shaking! The relief of having completed one of my most dreaded assessments on the LPC was immense. Although it could have gone better I was so pleased with myself. 

The day ended on a high with a too-fancy-for-students Christmas meal at a lovely steak restaurant. Our suits came in handy! Generally, my classmates felt passes were on the cards but none of us thought it had gone perfectly. The nature of assessments. 

Oh and in terms of mock results…

            CIVIL LITIGATION :                58%

            PROPERTY:                                74%

Lots of work to do for civil then! 

Christmas was the perfect break. Obviously, jobs continued but having a few weeks away from uni left me feeling revitalised for the final push of 2014 and the finish of the LPC. 

I hope you all had a good one. 

Advocacy practice assessment

The day I had been dreading finally arrived on Wednesday, the practice assessment for advocacy. I didn't actually feel too apprehensive in the days leading up however, come Wednesday morning I was a bag of nerves and very eager to get it over and done with. 

I met my opponent outside the interview room and luckily remembered to jot down his surname so that I could introduce him correctly. Unfortunately, his name was rather difficult to pronounce and I spent the next 10 minutes prior to entering the room repeatedly asking how to pronounce it - I am sure this came off as extremely rude but I hope he could see how nervous I was!

The hallway was filled with anxious students, some jabbering away, some quietly reading through notes, some wearing suits, others (like me) in their usual uni get-up. My pair was the last to get called in. Luckily the woman taking our assessment was my Tax teacher and I was grateful for the familiarity. She spent a couple of minutes chatting to us and I felt thoroughly calm by the time she pressed the timer and I had to begin. (In retrospect, it may have been better not to have had this prior chatting as, in the real assessment, you are treated as having begun the assessment as soon as you enter the room and should treat the room/assessor as you would a courtroom/judge). 

My intro was a little shaky and I forgot a few things I wanted to say, albeit nothing vital. After I had the introduction of the parties and the application out of the way I regained the flow I had had in the practices I had done at home and the whole thing seemed to whiz by. 

The 'show and tell' section (in which you are required to take the judge through the bundle, showing the relevant parts and telling how they strengthen your client's case etc) was my weakest part. This was mainly due to the fact I left out a large part of the respondent's evidence on the basis that I thought if it weakened my case it was best left for them to bring up. As I found out, it is necessary to address this evidence and try and put a positive spin on it in light of your client's case. Obviously I have used this technique before but thought, with only 10 minutes to make my case, it would be best focussing on all of our evidence and leaving the dissection of theirs to the full trial! Whoops!

My opponent had a very strong start but slowly began to unravel and I felt extremely uncomfortable for him, as I am sure he felt the same during my weaker points. Eventually he abandoned the 'show and tell' and moved on to a rather persuasive summary. 

Either way we were both found to be competent, and luckily not on the borderline. We were both told that our 'show and tell' was the weaker part of our advocacy, we both had felt it. After examining our notes, I was told that mine could be annotated a little more without risking a fail and that his were too annotated, bordering on breaching the NO SCRIPTS rule.

To be honest, the whole experience wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be and those 10 minutes flew by. The real assessment is on 18 December and we get our case notes on 2 December. I am hoping to get an application for security for costs again but there is a chance I will be given summary judgment. 

Some good advice our assessor gave us was to only have a brief read through of the papers when you get them. That way, when you come back to them in a week or so time you will have remembered in your head only the key issues i.e. those issues you are introducing as the relevant issues to be decided. 

Anyway, no other news this week. I hope everyone else's practice assessments are going well. 

 

Advocacy

I have finally finished the two advocacy workshops that are part of the litigation module. I won't lie, I still find it absolutely terrifying but I think I have a good shot at being found 'competent'.

The basic idea is that two students go head to head in an interim application hearing in front of a tutor acting as the judge. You receive the case papers two weeks in advance and can highlight and make notes as appropriate in preparation. 

As with interviewing, advocacy is a 'skill' and therefore marked as competent/not competent. My practice hearing is on 20 November and I have been given the role of applicant in a security for costs application (there are two roles: applicant or respondent, and two types of hearing: summary judgment or security for costs). One of the scariest things about being an applicant is that you speak first and it is your job to introduce both you and the respondent's solicitor, the basic facts of the case and then your specific points. Originally, I thought our class (all being applicants) had gotten the raw end of the deal but after the practice sessions I actually think the respondent's have it worse. The respondent's have to remain calm enough during your ten minutes of speaking to actually respond to what you have said. Not only do they have to address the points the applicant has made but also put forward their own version of events and reasons why the application should be dismissed, taking each piece of evidence in chronological order and making sure not to miss anything that the applicant has said that may harm their case. This is actually rather difficult!

The workshops themselves were extremely helpful and we got a lot of great practices in. The key here (more than ever!) is to prepare the advance case papers. Unlike interviewing, you can't just wing it and won't get the most out of the sessions without knowing who your client is and what you are actually arguing. Seems obvious but unfortunately very few people were adequately prepared. However, advocacy is similar to interviewing in that, the biggest tip in terms of properly utilising the sessions is to completely throw yourself into it. Most people were happy to have a go and everybody got something wrong. I personally think the ones that were reluctant and didn't give it their all are the ones at risk of not passing. 

A few little points: not wearing attire appropriate for court is an instant fail. Having a script is an instant fail. Writing more than a few bullet points on the case papers is a possible fail. Using two highlighters to show your points and their points is advised so that if you do go completely blank you can at least try to locate the right colour and go from there. 

We also have mock exams for property and civil litigation coming up on 27 November. Property is going fairly okay; it was never going to be a great love of mine but it isn't as hellish as I anticipated. I think I can do well in it with a little bit of focus and time. 

We have also handed in our final electives choices. After much consideration, deliberation and tipex, I finally settled on Private Client and International Commercial Law (which has replaced standard Commercial Law). I think that these, along with Employment, prove to be a well rounded and not too niche set of electives attractive to a majority of firms. Importantly, they are also subjects I predict I will enjoy and are areas I would be keen to eventually practice in - win win!

As for the LLM dissertation I remain undecided along with 80% of my classmates. I honestly think it will depend on my personal circumstances nearer the time. At the moment, as with most of the part time students studying the LPC, I am working four days per week and attending university one day which leaves me two days to try to fit in some relaxation plus the 15 hours workshop prep time. I personally can't see where I would fit work towards a (good) dissertation into that! Also, if i manage to obtain a training contract I don't think I will spend a further three months studying toward a qualification that won't result in me gaining anything. The LLM has never been a specific goal of mine. I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts!

First few weeks- round up

I have been back a few weeks now and I apologise for the lack of blogging, so expect a long one. 

GLS

I finally got the feedback report for the GLS assessment day (note to anyone applying in the future: they say you will receive it by the end of September but this actually means the very last day in September so don't be hanging on every email like I was!). 

All in all I scored 20/35. Obviously this isn't particularly great. My strengths were motivation for law and the GLS, collaborative working and delivering at pace. One of my biggest weaknesses (and my lowest mark of 2/5) was for decision making. This is something I am already aware of and am seriously trying to address, but it has definitely brought it home how very important it is that I change in this area. 

My writing skills were good and presentation skills also good so not a complete disaster!

University

We have completely settled in to Civil Litigation now with the course being in full swing. I actually quite like it although there is ALOT to do and the 7.5 hours suggested prep time for each workshop falls short. So far, my shortest prep time has been around 9 hours and this week I am already on 8 with still one i-tutorial and a test and feedback to go! 

Property Law and Practice (PLP) began last week and I must say it is yet to get me excited. So far we are on the conveyancing procedure and it all just seems dull dull dull. The prep for the coming week is addressing land law issues such as easements, covenants and trusts; it is basically a revision week of the LLB module. Oh the thrill! Anyone getting that I don't like land law??

We also have to choose our remaining two electives this coming week. We did do this last year, but with the change from LPC to LPC LLM some of the modules have also changed and so we need to reselect. This year I was a bit more organised and arranged a meeting with my personal tutor to discuss the options, deciding Private Client was a good choice as this is the area I currently work in and also Commercial Dispute Resolution to add a commercial element to my choices - top decision making right there!

We also need to state our preliminary intentions with regard the LLM dissertation. It is all a bit confusing to be honest and the real sting in the tail is that the LLM is not distinct from the LPC, meaning that the dissertation can bring your LPC mark down (especially considering it is weighted very heavily). In all honesty, my gut is telling me to avoid it like the plague. We are the first year doing it and it does feel like we are all guinea pigs with the tutors themselves not even knowing the answers to some of our questions. With that said, I won't rule it out at this point in time and will see how things look in February when the title choosing and planning process begins.

Work

Work is going really well and I have started doing lone home visits, only to collect documentation but it feels great to have the client contact. I am starting to get to grips with Wills and Probate and it is beginning to feel familiar. The team are fantastic and have thankfully taken me under their wing. Life is good!