FE1 Exam Thread (Mod Warning: NO ADS)

RandolphEsq

Farcear wrote: »

There is another thread open for this.

Probably only a few threads below this.

Two threads below with the last post no more than twenty minutes before the question was posted!

chops018

Yeah, the thread is usually on the front page or the second. It's getting really annoying seeing people advertise on this thread, I like discussing the actual exams on here - questions, topics etc. Don't like coming on and seeing someone posted and then it turns out to be an advert for manuals. There is a separate thread for this! It isn't hard to find!

Northern Child

JCJCJC wrote: »

It can be very fatiguing right enough, but there are many people who sit and pass all eight in one go. Since everybody's circumstances will differ, it's impossible to generalise. If you do go for it, you'll need to carefully plan how you'll use your study and revision time just before the exams to give equal weight to all subjects. At least you have the weekend in between to get some rest. A lot will depend on your location too, if you live near enough to the Red Cow to sleep at home it'll be more restful than travelling from the far end of the country and staying in a hotel, etc.
How tough the exams are for you is another factor - for a recent law graduate they should be straightforward enough, but if you've never studied law or if it's been a few years, there's a lot of work in getting FE1-fit. Even if you've done a four-year law degree or a primary degree and then a post-grad, you'll find that your first-year undergrad subject knowledge is now getting slightly stale - there are always new cases, new legislation, new European aspects etc so some research is necessary to come up-to-date.
I would say at all costs pick three subjects at least where you think you have your absolute best likelihood of passing, so that you get on the greasy pole that leads to completion, no matter what days they are on.

JC, what way did you break up your studying when you were doing the fe1s? Did you work fulltime or study full time? how long before did you start?

JCJCJC

Northern Child wrote: »

JC, what way did you break up your studying when you were doing the fe1s? Did you work fulltime or study full time? how long before did you start?

Everyone here will probably tell you I'm totally odd in the way I do things! I can work well from around 6am until mid-day, and I get an dreadful afternoon dip which no amount of cappucino can knock out, so I work again from about 6pm to 11pm or so. On fine days I just have to do some outdoor chores like mowing lawns etc before I can settle down inside again. I studied almost full-time, and I would start maybe eight to ten weeks before the FE1s. Social life reduced to pints on one night a week, and no pints at all and early nights for three weeks before the exams. You will know yourself how you are doing - when you are away from the books, eg in a car or such, mentally run through the cases on each topic and see if they are in your head. Same goes for statutory stuff - for example in criminal law, run through the major Acts and the sections in them for offences against the person and offences against property. In company law, be thinking (again for one example) about disqualification/ restriction, what are the sections, what are the cases, what is the major difference, what is the underlying policy, what did Thos BC say in his book etc.
If you do any sort of diagram or nemonic for cases, practise it frequently on scraps of paper. For example, I try to make simple sense of the DCC/Fyffes case like this:



Write on the diagram the key pieces of info - who owned the shares, who controlled the companies, who is a shadow director, who directed the controversial sale of shares, who may or may not have had insider info, what judge heard the case, what did she find, etc.

What works for me may not work for you, everyone's head is different. I use Tony Buzan's book on memory techniques quite a lot and find that his stuff works.

Hope that makes sense!

JC

Ned_led16

What do we do for the purpose of the exam if a problem question mixes the issues of insanity and intoxication:

A mental disorder under the 2006 act does not include intoxication.
Do we mention insanity or just talk about intoxication - even if the person is clearly insane. I would be inclined to talk about the two and say its a matter for the Jury to decide. Is there any precedent where a person was off his head but insane - and got off by the use of the defence of insanity? .. Re: Burns (delirium tremens) is close but not quite..

My problem with this is where a person is mentally ill and intoxicated. This report confuses things for me:
http://www.lawreform.ie/_fileupload/consultation%20papers/cpIntoxication.htm

Perhaps this is something learnt at under grad level???

RandolphEsq

Ned_led16 wrote: »

What do we do for the purpose of the exam if a problem question mixes the issues of insanity and intoxication:

A mental disorder under the 2006 act does not include intoxication.
Do we mention insanity or just talk about intoxication - even if the person is clearly insane. I would be inclined to talk about the two and say its a matter for the Jury to decide. Is there any precedent where a person was off his head but insane - and got off by the use of the defence of insanity? .. Re: Burns (delirium tremens) is close but not quite..
My problem with this is where person is mentally ill and intoxicated. This report confuses things for me:
http://www.lawreform.ie/_fileupload/consultation%20papers/cpIntoxication.htm

Perhaps this is something learnt at under grad level???

For FE1 purposes you are over-complicating matters! Let's set out your hypo. scenario; a man who is suffering from a mental disorder but intoxicated - wow! This is only hypothetical at FE1 level as it is hardly resolved on a practical level. No FE1 question will want both topics dealt with in a detailed way. Only understand each aspect basically, and how they relate to each other and you will hit high fifties!

On a side-note, listen to this, it is fantastic. Relax, enjoy your summer and don't kill yourself with FE1s 'til September

chops018

RandolphEsq wrote: »

For FE1 purposes you are over-complicating matters! Let's set out your hypo. scenario; a man who is suffering from a mental disorder but intoxicated - wow! This is only hypothetical at FE1 level as it is hardly resolved on a practical level. No FE1 question will want both topics dealt with in a detailed way. Only understand each aspect basically, and how they relate to each other and you will hit high fifties!

On a side-note, listen to this, it is fantastic. Relax, enjoy your summer and don't kill yourself with FE1s 'til September

Fully agree with you here. Some people really overcomplicate the problem questions. Also I agree with relaxing for the summer, I personally will be starting in August.

doing

The re-check results are up a day early on the website if anyone here's waiting on them.

doing

Oh they've disappeared again, sorry everyone.

editing this post:

the link in the email I get from lawsociety takes me to a page which says the results won't be out till tomorrow, but when I just searched for "results" on the website then they come up. So you can get them that way.

editing again:
They're completely gone now.

Caoileann

I don't understand how I didn't pass equity.. worrying considering i thought the exam went really well.. How will I ever pass it that was my second attempt

seanmk77

Caoileann wrote: »

I don't understand how I didn't pass equity.. worrying considering i thought the exam went really well.. How will I ever pass it that was my second attempt

Had the same experience. I was writing questions that I had prepared and basically learnt off by rote in equity. Was certain I aced the exam. Got 43 and have just been upgraded to 47. I suppose I’ll take comfort in the fact that it is possible to imagine a three percent improvement in performance. But equity was strange. I passed exams I performed far worse in.

MoneyMilo

Just got moved up from 32 to 50 in Company. I knew my result wasn't that low but I'm still surprised and delighted all the same! It just goes to show the mistakes examiners can make.

boomtown84

That's the biggest jump i've ever heard of...fair play!

Right 2B a liar

MoneyMilo wrote: »

Just got moved up from 32 to 50 in Company. I knew my result wasn't that low but I'm still surprised and delighted all the same! It just goes to show the mistakes examiners can make.

I don't think we will see a jump like that in the olympics!

As for though with equity I feel for you, I just got the bare 50 my time around and felt I did way better than that. It would really help if they released the papers or a copy of them so students can see where they fell down.

Strawberry Fields

Moved up from 48 to 50 on Contract, a small jump but a world of difference, absolutley delighted as I really wasn't expecting it.

chops018

Fair play to those who were brought up in the re-checks! I failed 2 out 4, didn't bother with the re-checks but looking from some of the jumps I'm thinking maybe I should have. Ah well, on to the October exams now.

perfectcircles

Hi, I'm a new member to the site, long time reader!
Just wondering if anyone could direct me towards exam grids for property law. I can trade for Equity/ Contract/ EU/ Constitutional/Tort if needed.
Thanks!

JCJCJC

MoneyMilo wrote: »

Just got moved up from 32 to 50 in Company. I knew my result wasn't that low but I'm still surprised and delighted all the same! It just goes to show the mistakes examiners can make.

J*s*s!! Do you realise the precedent that post will set! :eek:

JCJCJC

godeas16 wrote: »

Moved up from 48 to 50 on Contract, a small jump but a world of difference, absolutley delighted as I really wasn't expecting it.

congrats!

sorchauna

perfectcircles wrote: »

Hi, I'm a new member to the site, long time reader!
Just wondering if anyone could direct me towards exam grids for property law. I can trade for Equity/ Contract/ EU/ Constitutional/Tort if needed.
Thanks!

Give me your email address and I can send you on a property grid. Its only up to 2010 though and you may get a newer one of someone else!

Ned_led16

MoneyMilo wrote: »

Just got moved up from 32 to 50 in Company. I knew my result wasn't that low but I'm still surprised and delighted all the same! It just goes to show the mistakes examiners can make.

Who did they employ to mark the initial script Money Milo .... Bart Simpson?
You must be delighted well done! Seems odd that you have to pay for the recheck when they clearly f*ked up.... wait a minute ... does it - this is the law society!

Right 2B a liar

Can anyone satisfy my curiosity? Those who were marked up did you attempt 5 questions and those who had no change or marked down even, did you attempt 5 questions or less?

JCJCJC

Ned_led16 wrote: »

Who did they employ to mark the initial script Money Milo .... Bart Simpson?
You must be delighted well done! Seems odd that you have to pay for the recheck when they clearly f*ked up.... wait a minute ... does it - this is the law society!

I thought they refunded the recheck fee if you passed on recheck?

perfectcircles

sorchauna wrote: »

Give me your email address and I can send you on a property grid. Its only up to 2010 though and you may get a newer one of someone else!

Thanks, that would be great, i'll pm you my email.

Dotty404

sorchauna wrote: »

Give me your email address and I can send you on a property grid. Its only up to 2010 though and you may get a newer one of someone else!

Really sorry to jump in on this but just wondering if I could get the property grid off you also? I have the company, constitutional, EU, criminal or tort if it's any use to you

Northern Child

I got contract remarked- it stayed the same at 46. I attempted five in good time, I think I got punished for information dumping, and reading too many issues into the problems, I did pass the other four, some of which I found more difficult to study for

Right 2B a liar wrote: »

Can anyone satisfy my curiosity? Those who were marked up did you attempt 5 questions and those who had no change or marked down even, did you attempt 5 questions or less?

Blackandblue42

Moved up from 40 to 55 in Company. So relieved. Never thought I had failed when I left Red Cow.

Attempted 5 questions, though the last two were a vicious scrawl.

chops018

Right the October exams are 3 months away so I was thinking of getting an early start this time around. Started about 6 or 7 weeks before the exams last time and I didn't get the golden 3 out of 4 to move on and so I've to repeat the 4 now this time.

The way I studied last time was a bit of a mixture of things:

1. I had a manual for each subject - Read through it, took some notes from it etc.

2. I had a good text for each subject which I frequently referred to and read (albeit not thoroughly).

3. I had plenty of sample answers which I printed out and read, analysed, learned and took notes from. (However I only started to look at these about 2 weeks before the exams last time).

4. I had numerous past exam papers of which I attempted questions from myself using the book/manual/examiners comments/other sources, and then I would look at the examiners comments and use them to see how I did.

5. I would make concise notes e.g. in criminal law - list the offence, the statute, the actus reus, the mens rea and a case or two on it. property law I would try get the main cases of a topic in one or two pages. This resulted in me having about 10-12 pages for each subject for quick revision.

Now, seeing as I failed last time I am wondering where I went wrong study wise. The above was more or less what I did throughout the almost two months I went at study. I must mention however that for the March exams topic-wise I picked 5 of the most examined topics from the last 3-4 years, and then picked 5 other topics. So for each subject I had 10 topics, was this too little? It seemed so in the exams as I got very unlucky - in Equity I was able to do 3 good-ish questions, then 2 bad ones due to my topics not appearing. Similar situation in Contract. I got lucky with my topics in Property though, but I had to wing Criminal a bit.

Anyway just wondering if there is a different way I can tackle studying for these exams compared to the way I've outlined above, or is the above ok and I should just add to the number of topics I am studying instead of relying on those topics I studied to come up? Any tips at all would be appreciated, even if it's just to tell me I should know the whole damn course!! Which I really hope I don't as that would be very daunting.

valleyoftheunos

I think you have answered your own question there when you say you were only able to do 3.5 Qs in the Equity exam. you need to cover more topics in depth which requires you to spend longer at the study, I would think that 8 weeks is quite limited in this respect so starting earlier this time around is a good idea.

As for your methods of study I would suggest focusing on the Past papers and answering as many questions as possible and doing each question multiple times, your answers will improve significantly with each attempt. My own process was to cover the manual taking fairly extensive notes while doing so. Then I would spend a number of weeks focusing on the pastpapers, and finally the last 2 weeks before the exams would be spent consolidating the first notes and then shrinking those notes again until each Topic was contained on one or at maximum two A4 pages. this meant that it was possible to look over an entire topic in just a couple of minutes which I did frequently.

That is only my own system, it involved a lot of writing and covering material multiple times which I'm sure some people wouldn't like but for me it proved effective.

valleyoftheunos

I think you have answered your own question there when you say you were only able to do 3.5 Qs in the Equity exam. you need to cover more topics in depth which requires you to spend longer at the study, I would think that 8 weeks is quite limited in this respect so starting earlier this time around is a good idea.

As for your methods of study I would suggest focusing on the Past papers and answering as many questions as possible and doing each question multiple times, your answers will improve significantly with each attempt. My own process was to cover the manual taking fairly extensive notes while doing so. Then I would spend a number of weeks focusing on the pastpapers, and finally the last 2 weeks before the exams would be spent consolidating the first notes and then shrinking those notes again until each Topic was contained on one or at maximum two A4 pages. this meant that it was possible to look over an entire topic in just a couple of minutes which I did frequently.

That is only my own system, it involved a lot of writing and covering material multiple times which I'm sure some people wouldn't like but for me it proved effective.