Monday, August 20, 2012

how to easily study Llb law university of london , my way

I understand that when we first started our course in degree in law, some of us who is not familiar with the syllabus, and the terms, would face difficulties in organizing our study and would lose hope when the exam is near. Law is famous with the bulk of cases and principles that has to be memorized, that is true and we have to face that fact, we need to be able to do it. But how? How did our seniors able to score when there is so much to read? are they super human with photographic memory? hehe.. well, guess what, be smart and organise, thats the trick.

I am going to share with all of you the way that I organize my study. I see that the college/university will provide a lot of stuff to help in our study, but actually what happen was all these stuff confuses us and we wasted time not knowing where to go first, what is more important and so on. remember, although it is true that everything is important and we need to be recent and so on, however we need to remember that we dont have all the time in the world, the clock is ticking and we need to cover as much as possible to score, and not bored the examiner with rubbish information.

once you have covered all these, if u still have spare time, then it is fine to go and study on extra stuff such as those new story on the internet, new cases, comparing cases with other countries and so on, to score a big fat A. :)

ok now lets get started.

1: first of all, for each subject, you will need a Past Year Question Chart. sometimes if you are lucky, you will get one from your college/seniors. Or else, you will have to create one. don't fret, it is not hard to create one. but yeah it does take some time, maybe your whole day, maybe 2/3 days. you just have to read each questions, and jog down at the side about which chapter the question belongs to. and also, see if it is a problem or essay question, (important for Contract Law and Criminal). This is for you to see which chapter is famous asking about what. Do not spot chapters. but it is okay to leave out some chapters, but just some, like 2/3 only. you'll figure this out yourself ok.
ok now you have a chart and by this time you will see the trend and can quite figure out which topic is so famous you just unable to not study that topic. hehe. just like the example below, u can see that for Question 1, usually it would be on Offer & Acceptance. and like in Public Law, usually the 7th question is on Judicial Review. this chart is very helpful for you to see how much you should know, and how much you don't!
 here is an example:


2: next is you compile all question that has came out from each chapter. for example, Contract Law , Terms. compile them from both Zone A and Zone B, from 1997 until 2012 (for example). this is a process that you need to try to do yourself because you will learn alot while doing this.
you can find the exam paper in the VLE student portal. it will be opened in Adobe and so just print screen (press Ctrl + PrtSc (beside F12)), paste it in Paint and cut the question and paste and organise them in Word according to each chapters. you will be able to study each question next to another and you will see that the examiners actually asking about the same thing every year. tackle all of them.






3: Try to attempt the questions and just write skeletal answer on what you think what the answer might be. Now, notice that there is Examiner Report  on each of the exam paper. see what the examiners comment about the question, and sometimes they will even give the answer they wanted. after doing about 5/6 question, i think you will already know what case to use, how many and so on..

4: during your self study, skip that bulky text books, only refer them when the Subject Guide told you to do so. but usually, for Contract and Criminal law, the text book contains extra info on more cases which will be useful in Essay questions. but for public and common, the text book is important.

5: Do alot of questions. Infact, do all of them. write a full essay answer when you have gotten that full answer from lectures note/tutorials/examiner report. Dont write bullet points and skeletal answer only, that is to be done BEFORE you know the answer. practice alot of writing, practice how to shorten your introduction/conclusion, practice putting alot of cases and applying the principles because these are the marks. and practice writing fast in 40 minutes for each question.

6: since there will be so much to read, and you might get tired, look for notes from the college/university which is done in chart. for example, like these which is in Contract Law Revision Planner.

and so, these is all that i used in my study... in total, I need:

#Text Book to be read together with Subject Guide
#Charts in Revision Planner
#Past Year questions in VLE
#Examiner Report in VLE
#lecturers notes + Past Year answers by them


2 comments:

  1. Studying for LLB is hard! I think there are a lot of ways you can go about solving the exam. I am preparing for the exam with one of the best online LSAT courses. LSAT Test Dates are out and I’m going to start revising soon.

    ReplyDelete