Students tend to get hung up about lectures and the lack thereof on the University of London External Law Programme. Lectures are great – but the real reason why external students don’t tend to achieve as well as internal students is they don’t do enough (if any) practice questions from past exam papers.

Unfortunately, and with no experience of the system, many external law students underestimate the depth of knowledge and critical analysis required to do well. Others will have no experience of delivering a structured, comprehensive and tailored answer to a question in 45 minutes.

Understand that most learning doesn’t happen in a lecture – it happens by doing the research, talking it over with other students or lawyers and answering essay and problem questions. Internal students are assigned essays and problem questions throughout the year as graded coursework – and this helps keep them all on track in preparing for their exams.

As the External London LL.B. has no mandatory coursework and the marking system is based 100% on final exams, students have to get the discipline of answering (in writing!) practice questions from past exam papers throughout the academic year.

If you’re working in isolation, you are at a bit of a disadvantage to those who have analysed the questions and gone on to talk about them in depth before writing their answers. Further, many external students new to the University of London Laws Programme have never taken a course where their grade rides solely on their performance in a three hour unseen exam at the end of an academic year.

Those in the know, know the best way to learn and prepare is to practice answering past papers. If you can find relevant past questions and answer them while you’re studying a particular topic – so much the better.

Here is a past Administrative Law paper. If, for example, you’re studying who has standing to make an application for Judicial Review, you should be having a go at writing out an answer to Question 4.  Practice with your books open and give yourself the time to answer it fully.  Then try with the books closed. Then find another JR question dealing with standing from a different past paper and repeat.

Studying on your own can be a bit daunting. We are here to help. If you’re stuck, feel free to send an email to me direct (kkh@stokenewingtonchambers.co.uk) and see if we can help.  We aim to get back to you within 24 hours  and there’s no obligation to sign up for anything.

It never hurts to ask!