Cambridge Law Students and Applicants

... My friend was severely unlucky, actually. The reason she revised it in 3 days is because we had a 5 day gap between Civil and Tort (our last exam) so she hadn't looked at it much before. And then she was ill during our exams with one result being that she spent 2-3 days of the 5 day gap recovering and trying not to throw up...

you've got 6 weeks. If it's possible to get a high 2.1 on tort on about 3 days of revision, you can learn 5 subjects in 6 weeks

(disclaimer: I wasn't the person who got the high 2.1 on 3 days of revision - my friend did it.)

Please be true.

You've only got 3.5 to learn - you're fine! (The 0.5 is civil. It's light enough that a lot of supervisors consider it to be more like a half paper)

I thought it was just me who was alarmed by the amount of CPE!

The impression I've gotten from the examiners' reports is that you can't really drop any of it, so I'm planning not to do any essays (even though they're easier to blag) since I'll have to know the substantive law inside out anyway. Since it's mainly statute-based with case law regarding interpretation, I'm hoping that doing lots of problems and applying the rules will give me a feel for what to do in the exam!

How much reliance should I be putting on reading the digest? I'm currently spending quite a lot of time reading through it, and I'm not entirely sure how much I'm getting out of it. How much did you use it as opposed to just textbooks?

Interesting you should ask.

I did a fair bit of Digest reading last year for Civil I, all in the 2-3 weeks before the exam (like 10-15 mins an evening - focussed) and I also felt like I wasn't getting really anything out of it, but in the exam the questions stimulated it back out of me and I had a lot of good 'nuggets' of Digest law to weave into my answers.

I got 140, my best mark, in case you were wondering - BUT a girl who did considerably better than I (because after 140 getting even a single additional mark is incredible) just used the books and developed a good knowledge from there.

So basically, I think you can do it either way and still do very well. Don't plough too much time into the Digest though at the expense of other possibly more productive work.

PS who is your supervisor? Give initials not the name.

Omg man CPE is a nightmare lol. Well I haven't yet touched it but it's scary even before opening the book.

Sooo much to know it's crazy; and past results aren't so good (Padfield seems like a strict marker).

Where do you plan to get your case-law knowledge from? Munday is great but a cumbersome read (I remember it taking ages for supervisions).

Hmm, ok, thanks. I keep finding passages in the digest that don't seem to me to add up, and spending ages trying to find out what's going on. I always feel like I'm missing something massively important at the time.

I like your idea of reading bits nightly, there are a lot of times at night when I find myself not wanting to start reading e.g. a long article but when I'd be happy to put 15 mins into the digest which I can put down at any time.

My supervisor is SCB.

Yeah, I've just been reading Munday. I'm planning to skim the lecture handouts for anything from 2012, but beyond that I've got no idea what I'm going to do!

Thankfully I've got a memory like a sponge - my DoS knows of someone who literally bombarded the examiner (not Padfield, sadly) into giving him a first through the amount of detail he used. I'm hoping I'll be able to do the same.

Yeh I was thinking the same because there is just so much damn evidence to know... much tougher paper than I thought it would be lol.

Woe betide the next CSPSer who tells me CPE is "even more of a doss"...

Coming from a CSPSer? For real?

I won't have it.

PS who is your supervisor (initials)? Mine is FS, used to be RM. Lucky Selwyn lawyers who get JS (you one of them by any chance)?

Not that my 2 weren't brilliant, but I'd love to have been supervised by JS lol.

How much reliance should I be putting on reading the digest? I'm currently spending quite a lot of time reading through it, and I'm not entirely sure how much I'm getting out of it. How much did you use it as opposed to just textbooks?

...

...

And woo for CPE panic (it is harder than CSPS. Trust me)

Although NP isn't a strict marker - she's a fair one. I had her as a supervisor in 1st year and she was never strict with us. She always finds something good and something to improve on in your work but she predicted you grades she felt you deserved and wasn't amazingly strict or lenient in this.

Well, at least everyone is in the same boat. Hopefully the normal distribution of marks in CPE will just be lower than in other subjects (although the marking should take that into account!).

___


I'm currently going through the International papers to work out which topics I want to do (we've got two substantive supervisions left yet!). They all appear to be on the last few papers.

I'm hoping the problems are repetitive, like NA's papers for contract. I'm kind of glad I have a labour mock and took Aspects as these will allow more time for CPE and Conflicts (Equity is just a sinking ship.)

I promise you, you can do the paper only knowing 5 or 6. Whilst I'm not the best person to comment on this, my mate (you've heard me and BW mention her a lot) got a mid-first on the paper and she only learnt 5 topics.

How much reliance should I be putting on reading the digest? I'm currently spending quite a lot of time reading through it, and I'm not entirely sure how much I'm getting out of it. How much did you use it as opposed to just textbooks?

Hmm, I'm not sure I remember who she is. (Is she the one who wrote an article for me? If not, I'll ask you when I next see you.)

I was only planning to do five - do you think the following sound OK?

1. State responsibility
2. Treaties
3. Use of force
4. Jurisdiction/immunities
5. International-domestic relationship
(6. Sources)

The ones I'm dropping would therefore be statehood, title to territory, human rights and dispute settlement.

I'm more than a little unnerved about the fact that the 2011 and 2010 papers were described as being tough. [noparse]

Is JC writing the paper do you know? If so, don't do immunities and jurisdiction. His question in 2010 was on something mentioned in passing. His problem question in 2011 was incredibly confusing, no one liked it and ... ugh, it was just horrible (my answer basically comprised of "I don't know what to say here but I have this statute in front of me so I'll apply it!" I was kicking myself for answering it after the exam)