First Exam - Admin

The first exam administrative law was well shit. Needless to say I had spent a week fannying about and had managed to cover three topics. Good. Then when it came to Sunday I thought better do another few topics. Good. Came to 10am on Monday and thought now I can start revising them. Bad. Came to the exam, lack of no sleep and ridiculous amounts of pro plus and coke meant that my penmanship wasn't terribly great. Also whilst I had done all the work, every piece of reading there was to do for my chosen topics, when it came to answering the questions I could only remember half of it. Problem.

I answered one question on amenability, easy, YL etc what different lawlords said, managed to go on about Baroness Hale for ever, and then summed up the majority as I couldn't remember what the individual law lords said. Then I answered a question on legitimate expectation, bad. Whilst my opening paragraph may have been "ok" the rest of it was just what I knew about legitimate expectation as I didn't really understand the question. It had "substantive" in it somewhere, and it threw me off.

What was annoying was that most of the people I knew had revised the essay topics that had been set for this term, yet none of them came up in the exam, our lecturer said that ADR and PDR were relatively new and we wouldn't have to focus on them too much. Yet they came up on the exam paper. Which brings me to another point, Lecturers lie for some reason they do, when asked last year a property lecturer said that "chattels and fixtures are unlikely to come up because they are too easy as you have just done an essay on them" and they came up.

Comments from first years also indicate that a certain contract law lecturer, who threw in a couple of wild cards in last years exam, has said that our year is getting hard papers, so that the first year can now look good, and they have been promised easier papers. 1 in 3 people fail the first year at my university, and most if not all fails were contract law last year.

So I was annoyed but I'm over it at least I know I have passed.

Legal action and questions.

Something happened last night to my flat mate that has started me to think about taking legal action against the freeholders of the block I live in. While the landlord has a lease on the property, he cannot be directly responsible for the issues of (i) adequate lighting, that isn't turned on til about 9pm and secondly the lack of security to the stairs of our building, as it does not have a security door and is open to anyone to walk up and down thus a the main problem.

I'm writing to the housing association directly, and I assume that they do have a duty of care to maintain the building and insure that it is of a reasonable standard that would make it safe for its tenants. I'm hoping that my choice of words and rhetoric will establish that I am not pussy footing around, however if they write back and say as they did on the phone "we'll get the caretaker to sort it out" I shan't be happy. My friend was assaulted and this wouldn't have happened if (1) the lights had been on, (they periodically dont work and come on at different times) (2) there was either CCTV on the stair case, or a security gate like other buildings that the housing association runs have.

I know a bit from tort about duty of care etc and actions for negligence, my friend is considering taking action because I suggested that there may be a duty of care that has been breached, and other comments from other people, I know this may be of a "sueing nature" but really something actually has to be done about it. So I'm wondering about the options of supporting my friend, even if it means carrying out the litigation myself!

Any points or comments would be most appreciated, my email is up on the left if it's too long to comment.

Yes!

I am overly excited I have just received the news that I have a mini-pupillage with a good criminal set in London! Really excited!

I'm now thinking about how good I'll look in a wig! (ok it's my first mini-pupillage and i've taken the news as if I had secured pupillage)

Woop!

Exam Stress and Band Review

Courtesy of the BBC I now know how to deal with exam stress! Eat lots of fruit, regular exercise la la la. Didn't mention that smoking a pack a day probably also causes more stress and a heavier reliance on nicotine, it is only CBBC Newsround so aimed at kids, and I generally tend to forget that you can't buy cigarettes if you aren't 18, so I assumed generally that people taking their SATS would already have picked up the habit. Newsround takes a very nice childlike view whilst child line seems to think that people will commit suicide through exam stress.. (ok maybe at Oxford)

Also (Law Actually avert your eyes now I mention.. facebook) if you are on facebook and you are at despair with the world then join the group "I've thought about dropping out of law school at least ten times today" It's really f'ing funny, and it shows that most if not all people are practically in the same boat as you. (Pics of Despair - it's always darkest just before it goes pitch black and Mistakes - it could be the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others are featured in their photo gallery)

Enough of exam boredom lets talk about music!
So here are my current fav tracks, if you are so inclined to listen to them.

Review of LLLS's top bands
Foals - good band you might of heard in Skins (yes Skins just generally pinch the best music, check out their myspace and play cassisus or balloons)
Scanners bit like a british version of the yeah yeah yeahs.. check out lowlife
Hercules and Love Affair good tunes, which nearly all feature my favourite singer of all time Antony Hegarty who is the front of Antony and The Johnsons (no good songs though on his myspace page first two albums are superb though, if you are into drinking a bottle of wine by yourself and having a pack of cigs)
The Rumble Strips - from the E4 Advert Check out Girls and Boys in Love.

Crystal Castles - for something completely different/electro/thrash check out Crimewave saw them live at Push@Astoria and they had a really good set.

and finally
The Strokes (not new but as as I am currently trying to beat their song reptilia on medium on guitar hero and my small pinky finger won't stretch to blue! Plus the solo is hard!

Here endeth the review.

A new thought.

Keeping up with my English heritage I have truely decided that a cup of tea solves everything (possibly except imminent failure of exams) Work has been slow, really slow. I'm a week behind, and that's not very good when I don't have an extra week to schedule everything that I planned to do. Oh well as they say down the pony club Tally Ho! Why are there always students who look back on the year of education that has cost them £3,000 and say "why didn't I do more work" the reason being that you were probably having such a good time, that the possiblity of not getting a 2:1 in your exams seemed a very distant thought indeed. Not to mention the impossibility of getting a pupillage after that! So I'm a week behind with no back up plan except to do all the work.


I have also suddenly realised that Admin law is perhaps the most inconvenient law of all as there are NO good textbooks on the subject matter! Which means painfully I have to look to the dreaded De Smith, where a chapter is around 60 pages! Hark woe is me. Luckily all my other courses apart from Criminology(shiver) can all be learnt from one coherent text book!(Praise be Hudsons "Equity and Trusts"and L&O's "Tort Text and Materials"!





Coming soon - an interesting post about mooting and how to do well in it (obviously not following my earlier example but what I've learnt from watching my fellow peers mooting infront of a Law Lord.)

P.s Like the pictures or perhaps too much?

Tomorrow

Tomorrow or today as it is marks the start of the examination period. I'm a bit nervous/shit scared. I have worked out that I have 8 days revision/actually doing the work per each 5 of my exams, so it is going to be quite tight. Exams are a nerve wrecking time, people vomit, pass out under stress, and all your work comes down to 3 hours of an exam, in which you are supposed to write about 4 pages per question, 4 questions = 16 pages give or take. Not a lot considering you may have 20 pages of notes per topic ( a rare occasion but if I have done the work then I normally do have that amount) Then there is picking the topics and hoping that they do come up, question spoting (which is apparently never a good thing to do) either redoing the whole topic because you have no idea of what your notes actually mean, then if your exams are closed book you actually have to learn everything you have written down which can be an imense task in itself. Does anyone have a tip for examinations?

In accordance with examinations comes the dreaded exam result day when everyone really just wants to know if they have beaten other people and as law is so highly and boringly competitive, you get those who boast and those who are your mates and are quite shy about revealing their exam results.

What really does annoy me about exams and how they make up your grade of your degree is that no-one really knows or wants to tell us how are degrees are marked. There are various ways to do it of course and average of what you have done over the two marked years, or the four best marks over the period of two years (withstanding the fact that you have similarily consistent marks a 2:1 for example can be obtained if you have a mixture of 2:1's and 2:2's but if you were to get 4 3rd's in your 2nd year and then four 2:1's in your final year then the likelyhood of getting a 2:1 is unlikely)

So tomorrow dawns a new day for me perhaps because I actually will have to start doing the work at an alarming rate. And doing work constantly for the next 40 days isnt going to be appealing or attractive. Thoughts of exams are depressing and currently turn my stomach...

Good luck to all of you that have exams! I know that I'll need it, or by some divine intervention and hard work I can hopefully get some 2:1s this year :)