^ not so sure if the lecturer was being serious or just scaring people. I know at least two people who did international law last sem who both got HDs.
If it is true though the good news for OP is he doesn't need to take international law or any elective for the first three years XD
Nothing to do with how hard-working or clever you are, there's a very specific way to write law exams and it takes some getting used to
This is so so true. Law exams are all about technique and a healthy dose of luck at the 80+ range. It basically comes down to preparing a set of templates which are as concise as possible while still covering all the essentials. Exams are basically a race against time more than a test of knowledge. Breadth is much much more important than depth, so at the 80+ range what usually separates students is who had the faster method of writing out the answer rather than knowledge of the law.
the good news is it means there really isn't much you need to 'study' because exams don't give you enough time to go into any sort of detail. All you need to do is continually refine your notes and templates and do practice problems to become faster and more efficient.
To give you an example, for one subject, i pre-read about 75% of the course before semester even started, read absolutely everything available and did more practice problems than I probably did for VCE subjects. For another subject, I barely opened the book all semester, did pretty much no reading and only did about 3 practice exams. My mark for the first subject was only one higher than for the second...
To the OP:
Have you considered taking MBBS/LLB at monash? I think the way it works is you keep interchanging between med and law each year so it isn't as intense as it sounds (i.e. you won't have to juggle both courses at the same time). I really do not recommend taking law for just three years and then leaving it, wasting all that money and time...
If you do do law, 80+ is really difficult to predict because some people find studying law easier than others and often success at vce doesn't translate into success at uni. My opinion is that law is not one of those subjects that you can just grind at an expect to get a good mark.
I also think science/law is a very difficult combination. Science has a lot of ongoing assessments whereas law has fewer assessments (or sometimes none) but these are usually long term assignments and are usually worth more. When you mix the two, I find that the weekly small assessments from science tend to distract from the more long term law based assessments and it can be difficult juggling both. You will also have about 15-20 contact hours a week, compared with the usual 10-15 of an arts/law or commerce/law student.
I've heard from friends doing biomed/law that it is very intense. First year biomed is basically a much harder version of science. I've heard that the biomed subjects are very difficult and often require a lot of rote learning...
but anyway, once again i recommend you look at doing med/law at monash if you are interested in both courses!