Follow The Syllabus
Key point 1: Read everything in syllabus!
Out of the 12 exams and assessments, students are required to sit for, three exams are marked by the Bar Standards Board( BSB). These exams are Civil Litigation, Criminal Litigation and the dreaded Ethics paper. I will henceforth refer to these exams as“ externally assessed examinations / papers”.
Something very important to note about these exams is that because they are assessed by the BSB, it is the BSB who supplies the syllabi giving the school absolutely no say in its teaching content. So, the first thing I recommend you do when you start the course is to go to the BSB website and look for the syllabi outline of these externally assessed examinations.
As you go through the year, faithfully read everything the BSB syllabi outline tells you to read. Yes, you read that right: read everything. Make sure you know the syllabi content like the back of your hand because the externally assessed papers are not to be trifled with. Despite Civil Litigation is a multiple choice question paper, there were still people in my class who ended up failing it. I would say I read my notes thoroughly as well but I barely passed by four marks. Ethics is the paper most people end up failing in their first sit but I will deal with that on its own below.