How do you get an Outstanding on the BPTC?

I know this is a very broad question, and I know that very few people obtain this, but it will make me stand out if I can manage it. Even if I aim for it and miss it, I can at least still get a very high VC.

If anyone on here got, or knows of someone who did, an Outstanding, what do you think you did, which others didn't?

Thank you!

Reply 1

EagleLegal

1. With difficulty. (I got a VC.) Remember that on top of your studies, you should be doing several extra-curriculars and applying for pupillage, as well as having time to rest. It's a long year.

2. For top commercial sets, yes you need an Outstanding. But for everywhere else, the OS isn't as important as you think it is - it's a vocational course that almost no one respects, so bear that in mind. SO, depending on what area of law you want to apply for, you may be better off focusing on getting a VC and having an impressive CV and spending the time on pupillage apps than just going bonkers trying to get an Outstanding.

Reply 2

EagleLegal

And I've yet to hear anyone care about a "high VC".

A VC is a VC and that's it. Anything else is just trying to "dress up" the grade.

Reply 3

Forum User

Original post by xyz94

The BPTC is really not that difficult. The workload is relatively light. Unless the rules have changed you need to get Outstanding grades in six modules to get an Outstanding overall (you can also get an average of 85% but that is orders of magnitude more difficult). Alternative Dispute Resolution is a freebie. None of the others are very difficult although Professional Ethics is notoriously weird. I don't understand why people find Civil Lit and Criminal Lit difficult - it ought to be possible to just learn the material by heart (although when I did it the exam was just multiple choice, I think it may have changed now). Many people find Conference trivial, it is pretty formulaic. There isn't very much content at all to Drafting once you get the hang of it.

There is an element of 'luck' involved - because you need to get 6 Os, the difference between getting 85 in a module and 84 is huge, and in all the modules except the centrally set ones and ADR there is a fair amount of subjectivity in the grading. You could easily get a VC that would have been an O if you'd got a couple more marks in one module.

In any event, I can't imagine that you will miss a VC as long as you turn up, do the work, study properly and aren't a complete potato. If you get a pupillage before the BPTC ends it won't matter what you get, as long as you pass (I have never heard of a pupillage offer being made conditional on any particular BPTC grade).

Reply 4

Crazy Jamie

Careers Forum Helper

I agree with everything that Legal Eagle and Forum User have said. The issue with the BPTC is not so much workload as it is the fact that people seem to struggle with the change from a purely academic course (law) to the BPTC, which is vocational. So when people say it is a lot of work, that doesn't come down to workload so much as it comes down to making sure you put the time in to get to grips with the relevant skills and ensuring that you know what is expected of you. To my mind a lot of people don't do as well as they expected to do simply because they underestimate the course.

Note that I say 'ensuring that you know what is expected of you', and not 'ensuring that they are as good at those skills as possible'. The way that you learn core skills on the BPTC bears surprisingly little resemblance in a lot of respects to how you will use those skills in practice. One simple example is that when I was on the Bar course we were told that you should start civil submissions with 'may it please the court', and that we would lose a mark if we did not do so. So obviously I started submissions with that line. How many times have I started submissions with that line in practice? Not once. The odd 'may it please your honour/lordship' has crept in, but never 'may it please the court'. There are so many other more substantial examples of how what you learn on the BPTC does not resemble how you do things in practice. Back when I did the bar course the negotiation module was basically an entire exam where you were given marks for doing things that you don't do in practice. As a result it was very hard to score highly in it, and it was (unsurprisingly) scrapped.But for your purposes the key is to know what is expected of you and how you will be marked, and to do what you need to do to secure those marks.

But with all that, it's also right that there is plenty of luck involved. You just need to work to ensure that you minimise the risk of being caught out in an exam. It seems that there are a group of students every year on the bar course who get together to complain that one of the exams was unfair. I think it's been civil litigation recently. Basically, you don't want to be one of those complaining at the end of the year. You want to be one of those who passed whichever module was 'unfair'. Just make sure that happens. As has already been said, if you apply yourself properly getting a VC shouldn't be very difficult in the round. But getting an Outstanding is always an outside chance at best.

Reply 5

TimmonaPortella

Original post by Forum User

In any event, I can't imagine that you will miss a VC as long as you turn up, do the work, study properly and aren't a complete potato.

Repped for 'complete potato'.

Reply 6

Tom_Elliott

Original post by EagleLegal

2. For top commercial sets, yes you need an Outstanding. But for everywhere else, the OS isn't as important as you think it is - it's a vocational course that almost no one respects, so bear that in mind. SO, depending on what area of law you want to apply for, you may be better off focusing on getting a VC and having an impressive CV and spending the time on pupillage apps than just going bonkers trying to get an Outstanding.

I agree with everything you say, save that I strongly disagree with the statement that your BPTC grade is important for top commercial sets.

1. The vast majority of pupils at top commercial sets get pupillage either the year before the BPTC, or during the BPTC. (This can be deduced from the fact that either: there are no gaps between their legal education, the vocational course, and pupillage; or there is a one-year gap between the BPTC and pupillage, usually spent at the Court of Appeal, the Law Commission, or a big law firm.) In either case, they get pupillage before their BPTC grade is known.

2. Most commercial barristers, just like most other barristers, treat the BPTC as an expensive irrelevance. An Outstanding will not really improve your 2.1 undergrad in any significant way. The flipside is that a Competent will probably do very little damage to your double starred first from Cambridge.

3. Many sets openly state in their pupillage policy that for candidates who have the BPTC already, its result is disregarded.

OP, I agree with Forum User that getting an Outstanding is not as difficult as you may think, especially through passing six modules at Outstanding as opposed to an overall average of 85. Aside from what Forum User said about specific modules, do remember that the BPTC also contains two options on substantive law. Given that you pick them yourself, and you really should be interested in law if you're doing the BPTC, you ought to get Outstanding in your options relatively easily. That leaves you with four Outstanding needed out of 10 compulsory modules.

I don't mean to be brutal, but I disagree with the attitude that you should aim to improve your CV etc. instead of focussing on an Outstanding. Whilst not obtaining an Outstanding probably matters very little, it certainly won't hurt your application. You should aim to have both an impressive CV and an Outstanding: there will be plenty of candidates who do.