King's Inns 2017 (Entrance Exams)

Kings Inns or bust

Hello all!

After finally having finished my law degree that took longer than anticipated I'm pretty excited to be starting self study for the Inns. It might seem a bit early but as I'm working I can only really devote c.10 hours a week at the moment so it's going to take me a while to get through the material, especially as I'm no spring chicken.

If anyone else is about and in a similar situation or has any hints or tips, I'd be delighted to hear from you, please post and say hi.

A couple of quick ones if I may? I'm working out of the 2011 manuals. I understand Criminal and more so Evidence have moved on significantly but what about Contract and Tort, is there anything major I should read up on? Obviously I'll be looking to source a newer Con Law manual - any recommendations? I have Independent colleges manuals and I really like them.

During undergraduate it was okay in a pinch to refer to a case as 'case law suggests that catalogs are an invitation to treat borne out in a case where a school boy attempted to force Pepsi Co. to deliver a Harrier Jet by suing for specific performance'. I understand that this (or my kack handed wording above!) is unlikely to cut the mustard but how much detail is required on cases? Parties, one party, citations?

Thanks in advance!

hullaballoo

The standard is the same as undergraduate exams, so it's ok-but-not-ideal to fail to remember all the case names. I for one was and still am hopeless when it comes to case names but used mnemonics to help for remembering them and as you say, when all else failed I gave a precis of the facts and the principle set out.

You will have covered most of the material at undergrad as well, and the updates while they may be important from a legal perspective, won't take long to cover.

With over a year to go, the biggest risk is what you'll forget by the time the exams come around if you start studying now, tbh. You could start out by casually reading some academic articles to beef up your knowledge of areas that you might have struggled with at undergrad but I'd not be going hammer and tongs at the study at this stage.

Marcusm

Good luck with the study, you're no longer Procratinating. Perhaps people will finally lend you their ears!

Kings Inns or bust

Marcusm wrote: »

Good luck with the study, you're no longer Procratinating. Perhaps people will finally lend you their ears!

Love it, I'll try and be polite!

pixieprincess

Hi!

Congrats on the undergrad! You are very good to start studying now for KI.

I have just finished my LLM (just dropped in the dissertation last week). I took the prep course this summer and will also be sitting the EntExams in 2017. I also would welcome any tips and when going through my material if I come across any I will share them here.

Looking forward to getting these exams done and hoping to start studying in Nov.

nuac

Best of luck, Kings' Inn with this phase of your studies.

Based on the erudition and wide knowledge you have shown here you can start practisng writing your real name with "Bachelor of Law" written under it, and start saving for the wig and gown.

From some of your previous posts I assumed that you were sitting the Law Soc exams

I always found it easier to learn law by reading through full judgements, and academic commentaries on them.

Later you could do summaries on postcard sized sheets

You do need a good textbook on each subject. You need to be able to dig deeper into topics than do grind notes.

Frankly ten hours study a week is not a lot imho.

You may need to put in more if possible

Kings Inns or bust

Just had to copy this out, well didn't have too - had nothing better to do at work and the computers are crap and have no OCR so here ya go for anyone who needs it in copy and pasteable format.

John is a drug addict who owed a considerable amount of money to Maurice who supplied him with drugs. Maurice approached John and told him that he wanted him to assassinate Shane who was one of Maurice’s rival drug dealers in the locality. John protested that he did not want to do such a thing, but Maurice, who was well known to be a ruthless, violent character, told him that if he did not shoot Shane, he (John) would be dead within a week. He gave John a loaded pistol and told him that he wanted the assassination carried out within three days. The following day, John kept a lookout for Shane and eventually saw him getting out af a car and going into a house and, as soon as Shane emerged from it, John discharged two shots at him, hitting him in the stomach on both occasions. Shane collapsed, but an ambulance was quickly called. He was brought to hospital where he was given emergency treatment with the result that he survived the attack. Unknown to John, the shooting was captured on a CCTV system which was operating in the locality. He was easily identified as the assailant. When interviewed by the Gardaí, he said that he did not intend to kill Shane, but he did intend to seriously injure him so that he could tell Maurice that he had done his best. He has now been charged with attempted murder. His defence solicitor has sought your advice on the following questions; (a) is attempted murder the appropriate change in these circumstances? And (b) if it is, does John have any defence available to him? Advise the solicitor.

It's presented as a wall of text at source so I haven't paragraphed it.

GeorgeOrwell

(a) is attempted murder the appropriate change in these circumstances?

Murder is defined in Section 4(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1964:

4.—(1) Where a person kills another unlawfully the killing shall not be murder unless the accused person intended to kill, or cause serious injury to, some person, whether the person actually killed or not.

(2) The accused person shall be presumed to have intended the natural and probable consequences of his conduct; but this presumption may be rebutted.

In the facts of this case, the accused has admitted to intending to cause serious injury to the victim. Obviously, the person did not die, so was no killed. Therefore there was no murder.

Further, he did intend the natural and probable consequences of his actions (ie if you shoot someone in the stomach, it is natural and probable that he will die.)

Alternatively, he could be charged with causing serious injury, contrary to Section 4(1) of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997:

4.—(1) A person who intentionally or recklessly causes serious harm to another shall be guilty of an offence.

But, in my opinion, the attempted murder charge is the most reasonable.

And (b) if it is, does John have any defence available to him? Advise the solicitor.

There is the potential to raise the defence of duress. John could argue that he was put under such serious pressure by his drug dealer to carry out the murder that it was impossible for him not to do it. Therefore he didn't have the necessary mens rea to commit the crime.

I think there's a case from Northern Ireland on this. Something to do with the IRA forcing someone to carry out a murder otherwise they themselves would be killed. It's a difficult defence to make out, but the relationship between the drug dealer and the addict might be enough to give rise to the defence.

Kings Inns or bust

Thanks George, I wasn't looking for an answer but I'm most appreciative of it. The only thing I would say is this is the 50 mark question on the exam so they may want a little more. I only say that as I'm more than happy to see this thread turn into an argument on the pertinent questions.

It will certainly make a welcome change of pace from the daily immigrations questions and questions about returning things to Harvey Norman!

EMS77

Hi King's inns or Bust, How's things going?



Mod
He is still with us, but under another name.

Dundalk1927

Wondering how everyone found the exams? A nervous few weeks until the results are out now

scrummonkey

Dundalk1927 wrote: »

Wondering how everyone found the exams? A nervous few weeks until the results are out now

This is a very quite thread, wonder why this is when the fe1s thread is very active ?....anyhoo, I can give my tuppence worth as I have now sat both the fe1s and kings inns exams...(I know, I know....its complicated )

I would say both set of exams are pitched at same level. I found KI exams very doable but time was my achilles heel, I seemed to be always rushing the last question. I found Q1, Tort, a bit long winded and needed careful scrutiny to eliminate the irrelevant padding. The other questions were fine.
Evidence and Criminal were straightforward I thought.
Contract had many issues to identify and I really needed more time here.
Constitutional was ok, once I finally understood what exactly was being asked !

The 5 exams in a row, is really a head banging, brain melting, deluge of facts, case names, rules, doctrines, and legislation that merge into an impenetrable cloud of hazy recollections on day of particular exam. But, I believe that they are not graded with the same level of hostility that the fe1s are !:):rolleyes:

scrummonkey

sooooo, results out tomorrow ! Are we feeling confident ?

Marji

Not in the least

Doing the proverbial - and have to wait allllllll day to check the mail!!

How are you set?

wubba lubba dub dub

Best of luck today guys!

scrummonkey

Got them ! Hope all did well and see ye in Kings Inns :eek:

EMS77

Hope everyone got across the line!

Marji

Woohoo!!

Dundalk1927

Passed all 5 as well. Delighted with how I got on. Was very nervous re Evidence and Constitutional but passed both without needing a compensation pass so over the moon. If anyone wants any feedback on what I answered and how i approached the exams let me know.

MOD DELETION: Pls do not discuss the various courses etc. here

Congrats to all who have passed

Legal Eagle 25

Hi Dundalk1927, I am planning to sit the KI exams next August and was wondering could you give me any hints/tips? Or if anyone else could for that matter?

I have Griffith College manuals from 2014 and Independent Colleges manuals also, I plan to do the online course for Independent Colleges next June (2018).

Also planning to start the study in January.

Any tips are much appreciated

Dundalk1927

Hi Legal Eagle 25,

Firstly, the exams are very doable. They are a long slog but doable. By the time they come around your study and revision will have paid off.

I would have been lost without doing a Prep Course. Did it long distance and started 2 weeks after it started so it was mid-June by the time I commenced it. Know the manuals inside out and this will be of great benefit to you.

Personally I dont like doing exam questions repeatedly so I never actually wrote out a full answer before I went into the exam. I did however look over the past papers and highlight issues and possible solutions. Be familiar with the timing and structure of the papers. The format of Question 1 means that it's difficult to leave out any topic in the 5 courses. While no needing to know each area perfectly, you will need to identify the main issues. From looking at the papers you will notice some of the more common/recurring topics, know these the best.

Have your structure with each answer, generally something along the lines of identifying the issue, what is the relevant law, apply the law to the facts, come to your conclusion. Straightforward enough. Make it easy for the examiner to see what you are saying by having the logical structure and separate with paragraphs/heading etc.

I never did constitutional before Mid June and hadn't done evidence in 10 years. The Prep course was more than enough to get me through. I did have experience of Tort, Contract and Criminal though. If you are recently out of your undergrad you should have a great head start on these!

I found personally writing out shorthand notes of the Prep manuals and referring to these helped me but everyone learns there own way. Know cases for each area. Your not going to remember every case or fact but once you can give a description of the case then this will help you.

Below is some of the feedback I gave to my Prep Course after I got my results:

Answer the requisite number of questions, break down the issues and approach each one individually, if there is an overlap in issues refer to this and sum up at the end, take your time to read each paper.

I spent between 30 and 40 minutes reading each paper and marking them, making notes on them before I decided what questions I was going to answer. This proved invaluable to me in the end. I never really ran out of time, in Constitutional I would have liked another 10 mins whereas in Evidence I was finished with 15 minutes to go and bullet pointed answers for another questions. I never wrote more than 5 pages for any question and never had to ask for a second answer booklet, in reality I normally got to about the centre of the booklet. For the 25 mark questions, I probably wrote about 3 pages.

Regarding covering the courses, I covered every topic, didn’t leave anything out. The reason being that Question 1 in any of the papers can cover anything so it would be a huge risk to leave anything out (e.g. Tort and Constitutional, huge range of issues in both Question 1’s). Not sure if other students do, and I acknowledge some courses are longer than others, but overall it paid off so I would advise the same to all future students.

Overall: I forgot case names, mixed up facts of cases, only started revising from week 3 of the course. I am also working full time but took 7 days off before the exams to help with the revision. Crammed every night before exams until 12 at night, back up at 5 the next morning to get the bus at 6 back to Dublin. In Dublin for 8, a bit more revision then into the exam. They are doable but I would have failed all 5 miserably only for your team and notes.

Hope this helps!

Legal Eagle 25

Dundalk1927,

Really appreciate your response! Some much needed advice and tips given and I intend to take them on board.

Are you in the Inns at the moment? What is the course work like?

I plan to do the Inns (provided I pass exams) over 2 years and still work full time. Is this manageable?

Dundalk1927

Yes, currently in the Inns. Work full time and commute 4 hours a day to and from Dublin. Have done 3 weekends so far and it is manageable. Course is very enjoyable and interactive.

Workload is increasing each weekend but since I enjoy the course it is easier to manage

pixieprincess

Dundalk1927 wrote: »

Yes, currently in the Inns. Work full time and commute 4 hours a day to and from Dublin. Have done 3 weekends so far and it is manageable. Course is very enjoyable and interactive.

Workload is increasing each weekend but since I enjoy the course it is easier to manage

Good to know. I was hoping to sit the exams this Aug but I was commuting about 4/5 hours a day and it was just not manageable. I am now down to a 20 minute commute each way. I am hoping to do it next year but I have signed up for a part time PhD starting in Jan. So will see how I go.

USMLE TEAM

Sorry to barge in. Very informative thread. I plan to write the entrance exam in 2019. I will be entering my mid 30s at that time. Just wondering what the average age is, for people starting the Kings Inn's course. Thank you.

pixieprincess

USMLE TEAM wrote: »

Sorry to barge in. Very informative thread. I plan to write the entrance exam in 2019. I will be entering my mid 30s at that time. Just wondering what the average age is, for people starting the Kings Inn's course. Thank you.

From what I have read there is a great variety of ages. I know three people went in recently aged between 30-60 yrs.

caimitator

USMLE TEAM wrote: »

Sorry to barge in. Very informative thread. I plan to write the entrance exam in 2019. I will be entering my mid 30s at that time. Just wondering what the average age is, for people starting the Kings Inn's course. Thank you.

To a certain extent, it depends on whether you’re intending to do the full time/part time Degree. On the full time, there will be the 21-24 year olds, fresh out of college and able to commit to full time right up to those in their 60’s/70’s who are fully/semi retired, with a few people from other age groups.

In the part time, there will be a lot of people with families/full time jobs and for whatever reason can’t commit to the full time so it’s more concentrated in the 25+ age group in the part time.

But in each co-hort, there’s a good mix.

John Hutton

Very interesting thread.

I'm also hoping to do the exams next year.

Been quite a few years since I did my undergraduate so I'm planning to buy the core text books and perhaps the manuals in the new year and go over these to familiarise myself with everything again, bringing myself up to speed before undergoing a preparatory course next summer.

The preparatory course sounds like an excellent idea, I hope to attend one in person, distance learning doesn't appeal to me. I work in Dublin anyway.