AFF1300 and LAW2102 Exams!

[AT]

Hey everyone.

I'm pretty worried about these two exams at the moment. I'm behind on both and seem to be catching up at the moment instead of actually revising. I'm not sure why I still leave study to the end for some subjects. I always look back and think of the 'what Ifs' or 'what I should've done.' Wasting time in the past is now catching up to me. I've always been the kind that needs some degree of pressure to get things finished. I just passed contract A, so that's got me really worried about the contract B exam. I'm generally a pessimistic person, so that doesn't really help me.

Are there any notes available for AFF1300? I've taken my own and attended every lecture, but just don't seem to have absorbed much at all. The fact it's a 3 hour exam has got me panicking a bit too. I've realised this all takes quite a bit of a mental toll on me too, and I really hate being this stressed. 
Unfortunately both exams are on the same day as well.

Any advice or recommendations?

[ninwa]

I wrote out a huge post about the kinds of notes to bring into the exam but then I remembered contracts is now closed-book >_<

Sigh.

LOTS of law students learn the entire course in the last couple of weeks before the exam. The Law School Memes facebook group is full of those memes for a reason relax. Okay don't relax, work hard to catch up, but don't stress yourself out too much.

Do you have any past exams and answers for contracts? If you find that after you've learned everything, you don't have enough time to do any practice exams, look through the HD sample answers the faculty provides and analyse how they were structured. Write down how they approached the issue and try to memorise it as well as you can. The key to doing well in a law exam is to find out how to structure a law answer properly, and what better way to do it than by revising past HD standard answers?

Did you speak to your lecturer last semester about where you could have improved on contract A?

[AT]

I wrote out a huge post about the kinds of notes to bring into the exam but then I remembered contracts is now closed-book >_<

Sigh.

LOTS of law students learn the entire course in the last couple of weeks before the exam. The Law School Memes facebook group is full of those memes for a reason relax. Okay don't relax, work hard to catch up, but don't stress yourself out too much.

Do you have any past exams and answers for contracts? If you find that after you've learned everything, you don't have enough time to do any practice exams, look through the HD sample answers the faculty provides and analyse how they were structured. Write down how they approached the issue and try to memorise it as well as you can. The key to doing well in a law exam is to find out how to structure a law answer properly, and what better way to do it than by revising past HD standard answers?

Did you speak to your lecturer last semester about where you could have improved on contract A?

Thanks for the reply.

Good to know I'm not alone. The thought of being in this situation in isolation is very overwhelming at times. Haha, ye it's a great memes page, provides for some good laughs.

I don't think there are any up on moodle at the moment in terms of Exam sample answers. Perhaps closer to the date they will post a few online. I found in the last exam that I would identify a number of issues and just scramble to write them all down, trying to cover as many bases as possible. I'm not quite sure how to approach a question with so many concepts being covered in the course. The amount of cases is overwhelming (even though it is supposedly a lot less than previous years), and I don't even know if it's possible to cram so many cases in such a short period of time. I've been taking notes and going through all the lectures over the past week or two. I'm currently up to Week 7, but haven't really reviewed the notes I have taken or the concepts at large.

I think I would be fine and relatively calm if the exams weren't so soon and on the same day. It's just the fact that my two weakest subjects of the semester are on the same day, and this in itself is a rather daunting prospect.

In regards to your last question, I didn't speak to lecturer last semester. At that stage I was just glad contract A was over and didn't want to give that experience (a score of 50) a second thought.

[TrueTears]

AFF1300 is the equivalent of AFC2000. From my own experience, the exam for it is not that hard at all, Just know the main concepts from every topic and the basic formulas (Fisher equation etc).

I've attached some notes which may help.

[ninwa]

Perhaps you are identifying issues that are not relevant to the question.

Make sure you look at the mark distribution. A 5 mark question is not going to have 10 different issues in it.

Also, a rule of thumb is that the same issue will not be asked twice in the same exam. If question 1 is a clear estoppel question, then you may need to reconsider whether the estoppel issue you identified in question 2 is actually there or if you are just being paranoid. There's no time for covering everything "just in case" - identify and address only the salient ones.

Also it's normal that something you learned in the semester just doesn't come up at all. Don't try to insert it in if it's not relevant just because you studied it. My corporations law exam last semester only covered half the topics we studied (to the extreme panic of everyone involved)

[AT]

AFF1300 is the equivalent of AFC2000. From my own experience, the exam for it is not that hard at all, Just know the main concepts from every topic and the basic formulas (Fisher equation etc).

I've attached some notes which may help.

Thanks for the notes TrueTears. It does seem quite similar but I think there is a few differences in a few of the topics covered. Nevertheless they are very helpful.

Perhaps you are identifying issues that are not relevant to the question.

Make sure you look at the mark distribution. A 5 mark question is not going to have 10 different issues in it.

Also, a rule of thumb is that the same issue will not be asked twice in the same exam. If question 1 is a clear estoppel question, then you may need to reconsider whether the estoppel issue you identified in question 2 is actually there or if you are just being paranoid. There's no time for covering everything "just in case" - identify and address only the salient ones.

Also it's normal that something you learned in the semester just doesn't come up at all. Don't try to insert it in if it's not relevant just because you studied it. My corporations law exam last semester only covered half the topics we studied (to the extreme panic of everyone involved)

Yeh this seems to be the problem. I need to structure my answers better. When talking about a certain topic in relation to the given scenario, how is it best to apply the relevant case of authority? From what I understand you only have cite the case in brackets. But what if there are a number of cases demonstrating a certain position, how do we go about decided which to use?

I'm still confused about how I should go about structuring my answers.

[ninwa]

Yeah just cite a case, don't write out the principle again, your marker already knows it like the back of his/her hand and you're just wasting precious exam time

There's nothing wrong with citing 2 cases as long as they are actually relevant

I'd write something like "Although the contract appears to be invalid, A could rely on estoppel, because of <fact> (case 1, case 2). However, this may be problematic because B could argue x (case)" etc

Also don't write out the whole name of the case, if it's called Prepaid Services v Atradius (just pulled a random case out, this has nothing to do with contracts dw) you're perfectly fine to just write (Prepaid) or (Atradius), as long as it's recognisable

[sam.utute]

Just remember it's important to raise all the issues, regardless of high unlikely they are to succeed or be discussed in reality.
The feedback I've been getting for the last 3 semesters is that I dismiss the minor issues without any mention of them.

I used to think if it's minor, bugger it, I'll spend time on something more important. Always good to write that one extra sentence.