bptc

When will they learn? I think every year has its fair share of rabble-rousers, who seek to point the finger elsewhere after getting negative exam results. In my year they tried something similar, happily relying on the belief that it would bring their "skills" at litigation and argument to the attention of prospective chambers. It may have done for some, but not in a good way.

Reply 2

Denning2012

OP

If students are being treated unfairly, it is only right and proper that they stand up for themselves.

Many BPTC students all over England and Wales are dissatisfied with the course e.g. more than 400 BPTC students from 8 different providers signed the letter of complaint, according to the info on legal cheek.

Reply 3

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy. The exams have always been difficult, especially the closed book litigation exams. That students didn't do well on them and now seek to point the finger elsewhere smacks of evasion and a sense of entitlement. Life as an advocate is not fair, whether you're dealing with a prejudiced jury, a judge who's already formed a view of the case without hearing your side, or a local CPS unit who are determined to make you fight every inch of the way through the CPIA. You don't complain about it though, you put your head down and work through it.

Reply 4

Denning2012

OP

Some people like things to be done properly and fairly and others don't!

It is a well known fact that the new BPTC is significantly more difficult than the old BVC.

Reply 5

nulli tertius

21

Original post by Kessler`

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy. The exams have always been difficult, especially the closed book litigation exams. That students didn't do well on them and now seek to point the finger elsewhere smacks of evasion and a sense of entitlement. Life as an advocate is not fair, whether you're dealing with a prejudiced jury, a judge who's already formed a view of the case without hearing your side, or a local CPS unit who are determined to make you fight every inch of the way through the CPIA. You don't complain about it though, you put your head down and work through it.

Depends on your time line, I think.

They weren't very difficult at all, and were a lot easier than the equivalent exams for solicitors, for the approximately 140 years leading up to the reforms of the early 90s.

Reply 6

Original post by Kessler`

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy. The exams have always been difficult, especially the closed book litigation exams. That students didn't do well on them and now seek to point the finger elsewhere smacks of evasion and a sense of entitlement. Life as an advocate is not fair, whether you're dealing with a prejudiced jury, a judge who's already formed a view of the case without hearing your side, or a local CPS unit who are determined to make you fight every inch of the way through the CPIA. You don't complain about it though, you put your head down and work through it.

They took the exams in April.

I don't know about BPTC providers, but when I took exams in December, we got our results in February and March.

Do you really think they have their results already? Two weeks later.

Reply 7

Clip

19

Original post by Denning2012

Some people like things to be done properly and fairly and others don't!

It is a well known fact that the new BPTC is significantly more difficult than the old BVC.

I sympathise on the one level that the BPTC is very expensive, and it's a lottery ticket as it is. In a sense, if the BSB are just going throw random stuff at people - there might as well not be a course and candidates should just pay for an examinations and self-study regime. The professional qualification and career aspects aside, I think it is extremely poor to require people to pay big money for a course, and then examine them on something other than the general content and under conditions different from that taught.

On the other - it was every thus that people who are secure in their jobs - who qualified under different circumstances find it very easy to sit back and scoff. People today with a string of GCSEs A grades look back on people from the 90s and think they're idiots. People from the 90s look at those just before them with O levels, and think they had it too easy.

Reply 8

Whatever your feelings about the BVC/BPTC, is this really something that you are going to use in your pupillage applications? Just think how that's going to look to a potential pupillage provider, when you start railing against the "unfairness" of the exams as an explanation why you only had a C instead of a VC/O.

I think there's a lot more useful and constructive work that these students could be doing to increase their chances of pupillage.

Reply 9

Original post by nulli tertius

Depends on your time line, I think.

They weren't very difficult at all, and were a lot easier than the equivalent exams for solicitors, for the approximately 140 years leading up to the reforms of the early 90s.

I quite agree NT, although I didn't think the OP would have been contemplating that era. When I prepped for my exams, I looked back over BVC papers for the last 5 years. I should also add that my institution (NLS) provided the model on which the modern BPTC was founded. Our exams, including the vicious civil litigation exam, were very similar to the centralised tests of today.

My perception, and that of most others in my year, were that the exams were difficult because of the range of precise knowledge that you were expected to know. Having said that, you could guarantee that certain areas were going to feature heavily, time limits and various service requirements in civil lit for example. Preparation for the exams involved a fair bit of judgment, including making an educated guess on the topics most likely to feature and studying them in depth. That sort of tactic meant that a student would often miss some of the fringe questions (designed to pick up overall 'general' knowledge) but pick up the main body of marks in the specific areas.

The only ones that I ever thought of as 'unfair' were the Opinion Writing exams. That was simply because different examiners had very different ideas of style and content - it was never enough to write a "generic" advice. Your success largely depended on finding out/making an educated guess as to who would be marking your paper and adapting accordingly. I did think that was horrendously unfair.

Then I had to do the same in employment, and discovered that was exactly how it worked in real-life. I've seen advices from great silks which vary dramatically between their various instructing sols. I've had to vary my own work (which often involves presentation of criminal cases/complex legal research) dramatically depending on the individual who has asked for it. So, on reflection, perhaps it was less "unfair" and more about preparing you for the Bar outside the academic environment!

Reply 10

nulli tertius

21

Original post by Kessler`

I quite agree NT, although I didn't think the OP would have been contemplating that era. When I prepped for my exams, I looked back over BVC papers for the last 5 years. I should also add that my institution (NLS) provided the model on which the modern BPTC was founded. Our exams, including the vicious civil litigation exam, were very similar to the centralised tests of today.

I date from the overlap period, when my contemporaries had a choice of how to read for the bar.

They could do the old bar exam with optional tuition at the Inns of Court School of Law or from private coaches or none at all; could call themselves barristers but were not allowed to go into private independent practice in England.

Alternatively, if they wanted conventional practice they had to do the BVC at the one and only provider, the ICSL.

I do have a set of the papers Denning took for his bar exam. I think candidates today would be shocked by the breadth, although not the depth, of the questions asked.

And for those moaning about bunching of exams the Trinity 1923 timetable was:-

Roman Law Thursday 10AM-1PM*
Constitutional Law (English and Colonial) and Legal History Thursday 2PM-5PM*
Criminal Law and Procedure Friday 10-1*
Real Property and Conveyancing Friday 2-5*
(the alternate papers for this paper were on Saturday morning)
Common Law Monday 10-1
Equity Monday 2-5
Law of Evidence and Civil Procedure Tuesday 10-1
General Paper Tuesday 2-5

The papers marked * were a separate section of the exam which could have been taken together in an earlier term.

Reply 11

Bingham2012

The current BPTC allows the following outcomes (due to an unfair technical feature of the BPTC) in the knowledge area exams i.e. CIVIL, CRIMINAL & ETHICS:

Student A - can obtain an overall mark of 69% (significantly higher than Student B) and FAIL.

Student B - can obtain an overall mark of 60% (significantly lower than Student A) and PASS.

Not really a very fair test of the students knowledge of the subject matter is it?

Reply 12

Original post by Kessler`

Whatever your feelings about the BVC/BPTC, is this really something that you are going to use in your pupillage applications? Just think how that's going to look to a potential pupillage provider, when you start railing against the "unfairness" of the exams as an explanation why you only had a C instead of a VC/O.

I think there's a lot more useful and constructive work that these students could be doing to increase their chances of pupillage.

Where did the idea that it would appear on a pupillage application come into it?

I didn't read that in the piece and I didn't see it posted earlier in the thread.

What I saw was people taking the issue to the creator of the exam and complaining to them.

You seem to have an opinion, that these students shouldn't be complaining, and are willing to drag in any argument you can think of, regardless of how well that sits with the reality of the situation.

They are complaining because they got bad results...except the results are not out yet, and doubtful any of them have had the results.

Makes no sense to complain on a pupillage application....yet no one has suggested that they are, or will.

Stick to the facts and make a sound argument based on that.

Should students that find mistakes in the setting of their exams make valid complaints to those setting the exams?

That is the question.

What is your answer to that? Without going beyond the context which is placed before us. Without relying on facts not in evidence, without making complaints that go against the facts that exist.

Should students be able to complain about the examinations in professional level exams that come at the end of a course that costs £16k in London, if those complaints are valid?

Reply 13

Original post by Bingham2012

The current BPTC allows the following outcomes (due to an unfair technical feature of the BPTC) in the knowledge area exams i.e. CIVIL, CRIMINAL & ETHICS:

Student A - can obtain an overall mark of 69% (significantly higher than Student B) and FAIL.

Student B - can obtain an overall mark of 60% (significantly lower than Student A) and PASS.

Not really a very fair test of the students knowledge of the subject matter is it?

And that doesn't seem a very accurate way of presenting the situation. Do you mean that a student can score very highly in most of their modules yet fail one? In that case, yes, the student who can get 60% overall without failing one module will pass ahead of someone who fails one module. You are required to pass every module - I don't see anything unfair in that. Perhaps you could explain the "unfair technical feature" a little more?

NT, I would have loved to have done Roman Law. What a subject! Do you think they were required to memorise the speeches of Cicero?

Reply 14

Original post by nulli tertius

I date from the overlap period, when my contemporaries had a choice of how to read for the bar.

They could do the old bar exam with optional tuition at the Inns of Court School of Law or from private coaches or none at all; could call themselves barristers but were not allowed to go into private independent practice in England.

Alternatively, if they wanted conventional practice they had to do the BVC at the one and only provider, the ICSL.

I do have a set of the papers Denning took for his bar exam. I think candidates today would be shocked by the breadth, although not the depth, of the questions asked.

And for those moaning about bunching of exams the Trinity 1923 timetable was:-

Roman Law Thursday 10AM-1PM*
Constitutional Law (English and Colonial) and Legal History Thursday 2PM-5PM*
Criminal Law and Procedure Friday 10-1*
Real Property and Conveyancing Friday 2-5*
(the alternate papers for this paper were on Saturday morning)
Common Law Monday 10-1
Equity Monday 2-5
Law of Evidence and Civil Procedure Tuesday 10-1
General Paper Tuesday 2-5

The papers marked * were a separate section of the exam which could have been taken together in an earlier term.

What level of content was required for those exams? Could be more could be less, I don't know, I am asking because just having a tightly bunched timetable doesn't really tell the whole story.

My big complaint with Law at Uni was that it was more akin to a memory test then any real knowledge or understanding of Law. In my University there were no casebooks, no statute books allowed in the Exam room. So everything had to be memorised before you got into the class room.

Bunching is fine, when you don't need to memorise things, because you have spent the previous 3-6 months learning the principles, which you may cram again before the exam.

I still remember the basic principles of Tort and Contract now, and I did those in my first year at University. Applying those to a problem, even now 3 years later, would still be doable by me, as long as I didn't have to remember all the cases involved, and could refer to a book to find them.

Reply 15

Original post by Konran

.....

Do you remember the 'movement' from last year called 'Occupy the Inns'? I see this as having a similar attitude. If, in the long run, I'm wrong, then I will accept that. Something tells me that, despite these complaints (putting aside whether they are justified or not), the system is unlikely to change and these students would be better to put their energy into something that will benefit their pupillage applications.

On a side note, I wonder which Law Lord will be the next to appear? Philips2012?

Reply 16