How to get organised on the BPTC

Introduction / Disclaimer:

You might be feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Overwhelmed with your workload, overwhelmed by "stuff". 

Too much work to do: 
Lots of chapters to read for each knowledge small group.... 
The deadlines for formal feedback work are imminent... 
Not enough time to write opinions, drafts and skeleton arguments...

Too much "stuff":
There are case papers, workbooks, student instructions, manuals… the course overview and your timetable. So many pages of information, so many things to cart around. ..

You might be wondering how to get organised and how to keep up with the work on the BPTC. You have my sympathies – this is a complicated course with lots to do and lots to learn.

These are my own personal thoughts and views. They may on occasion be provocative/irreverent or cheeky. They are not binding, and will not themselves guarantee success. But as a person who has often had to fight the forces of disorganisation and poor short term memory, these are good strategies for helping you keep on top of everything.

The 3 part strategy

There are 3 planks to my strategy (and sometimes I am a plank!):

1. Know what you are doing at any given time!

2. Have a “Survival Bag”!

3. File everything!

Know what you are doing at any given time

Half the battle of the BPTC is keeping prepared for classes and ensuring you have enough time to get everything done. This involves FORWARD PLANNING.

I hate to say this, but generally, students don’t do forward planning. Work is done at the last minute, with the deadline looming. Students justify this by saying “I work better under pressure” but I don’t buy it. This year is the year to school yourself into professional habits; professionals don’t procrastinate and then work in a mad rush, they plan ahead. 

You need to think about a week or a fortnight at a time. If you think day-to-day, you are going to suffer. On that day when you have 2 SGS, you’ll end up pulling an all-nighter and feeling knackered the next day. Not good. Whereas if you plan you work over the week, you will use gaps between classes and other times (quiet evenings such as Monday or Tuesday night when most aren’t so keen on going out) to get things done. Too young to watch Downton Abbey? Good, get some work done in the week, take time off on Sunday, and leave us boring middle aged people to watch adult-appropriate period drama!

The Course Overview and Timetable are the 2 most VITAL documents to tell you what you’ve got to do each week. So download, photocopy or a copy which you keep with you AT ALL TIMES. Have a copy at home, and a copy on you. Then you will always know where you need to be, when and what you need to do. 

I copy everything into my diary. I work with pen and paper – no worries about hacking, running out of memory or battery life. I write it with a biro, so those of you who say “oh but you might drop it in a puddle” – ha! Biro won’t run in the wet. And your laptop/PC/smartphone, if dropped in a puddle will definitely suffer more. So, who’s sorry now?! ;)

Have a “Survival Bag”!

Soldiers have a Survival Bag. So should you. This is a bag which is kept packed with your essential kit.

That kit should contain:

1. Course overview grid

2. Timetable

3. Pens – plenty colours and a couple spare in the main colour you write in

4. Pencils

5. At least one highlighter

6. Lined A4 file paper (LOTS!)

7. Ruler

8. Calculator

9. Oyster card

10. City Law School USB stick

11. Headache tablets

12. Small amount of spare cash for snacks/ tea/ coffee

13. Swipe card

14. Library card

15. Smartphone, charger cable, power pack
16. Water bottle (reusable, please, let's look after the environment!) 

You will obviously have to add the preparation and work you need for each session on a day by day basis. But if your Survival Bag has these essentials, you won’t have to worry about keeping track of them.

If you are a laptop person and bring your laptop, bring your mains power cord as you might find that your battery needs topping up when you least expect it.

File everything!

Bits of paper pile up quickly. Individual bits of paper are easily lost. They get left behind, get scrunched up at the bottom of your bag. There are so many ways in which they will elude you when you need them the most. So you need to file everything, and have a system.

The filing system you see pictured above is that of my former student Eloise Turnnidge. 

She has some excellent and astute advice for you all:

"My advice on how to get organised...

1. Buy a folder for every subject, but choose a different colour for each. I found it helped me compartmentalise. It doesn't matter what the colours are, but for reference with my photograph, to demonstrate the amount of documents I had for each subject, mine were:

Pink - advocacy; divided into Civil, XIC and XX. 
Orange - litigation; one folder for civil, criminal and evidence respectively. 
Yellow - skills; somehow I managed to squeeze OPW, drafting and conference into two folders. 
Green - ADR and ethics. 
Blue - divided between my two options. 
Purple - general course information; timetable, course outline and assessments handbook, etc.

You'll need some file dividers, obviously. I split my folders by syllabus topic for knowledge subjects and by brief for skills subjects, which seemed to work well. The weakness was that some briefs were used for multiple subjects.

2. Recreate the same folders and colours for your electronic files. Continuity helps, especially when you have so much to do!

3. File everything the minute you get it! Otherwise you'll simply have mountains of unorganised paper.

Bonus tip! It really should not need to be said, but as an ex Apple employee I'm very familiar with the consequences of failure to do so... BACK UP YOUR DIGITAL FILES. REGULARLY.

Enjoy the course - it'll fly by!"

My own personal suggestion is that you need the following:

1. A ringbinder for each knowledge subject:

- Civil litigation, evidence and remedies

- Criminal litigation and evidence

- Ethics

- ADR

2. A ringbinder for Drafting (which you will only use for LGS notes, suggested answers and work right now, but later will become your Drafting Exam Toolkit)

3. A ringbinder for Opinion writing (again, not something you will use right now, but will become your Opinion Writing Exam Toolkit)

4. Document wallets / elastic files for each of your sets of case papers, notes and work as you go along. Some of the documents may end up in the Exam Toolkits above, but that is something to concern yourself with at a later date.

5. A small (eg half inch) ringbinder for your current advocacy work. By this I mean the exercise you are working on each week. When you aren’t working on it, put the stuff back into the relevant document wallet in item 4 above. You need your advocacy papers in an easy access format, particularly if you are working with a bundle. You need to get to witness statements quickly and easily.

I realise I am suggesting that you buy quite a few files and folders. I am not actually a stationery obsessive (how sad do you people actually think I am?!). Neither do I have any shares in any file manufacturing company. Chance would be a fine thing! I just know that you need to have your revision resources building up as you go along. Revision time will be scarce and you don’t want to be putting your work in order then.

I don’t advise having a single lever arch file for everything. I find lever arch files cumbersome. They are big and bulky. It is not easy to just flick through the contents. You will need dividers. Using dividers will make filing contents difficult. Any system involving difficulty will usually end in failure. My system is SIMPLE.

After EACH LGS and SGS in any knowledge subject, on your way home (or as soon as you get home), make sure you fill in any gaps in your notes. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT!  You have to do this while you still remember. If you are honest, you will realise that your short term memory is unreliable and that something on the day of a class you think you will remember without writing down will probably be forgotten 2-3 days later. After you have filled in the gaps in your notes, file them in the relevant ringbinder.

At the end of each week, have a filing session. File anything and everything that you can. It will minimise the loss of documents. If you write anything on scraps of paper, write it out properly on A4 file paper. Then file it. I have made lots of notes ‘for later’ on scraps of paper, train tickets, receipts and then promptly LOST THEM ALL. Copy and file as soon as you can.

Don’t like files and paper? Think online.

XMind and MyStudyBar are very useful. They can be used for creating mindmaps, revision timetables and the like.

Anki is great for creating flashcards and testing yourself.

Evernote is a superb cloud based notetaking system, is free and can be used with laptop, iPad and smartphone. Alternatively, use OneNote or iNote. Sync and back up your notes frequently. I like Evernote because you can also incorporate pictures taken on your smartphone into your notes.

I would like to thank Eloise for her time and trouble in setting out her advice and for providing a photo of her filing system.

The Bad Cop: tough love for BPTC success (a guest post by Gillian Woodworth)

When I advise students, I always try to do so in an upbeat way. This works for the most part. However, my tone and approach is not always effective. I sound too earnest some of the times, like a playful puppy. I sound like I’m literally bouncing up and down telling you that everything is wonderful and fabulous… and I am *so very* excited.

Sometimes you need to look at things from a different angle. Sometimes you need a reality check. Sometimes you need another voice and a different tone.

My former colleague Gillian Woodworth was a BPTC tutor for many years and has served at City Law School as the LPC Course Director. She worked for many years as a solicitor, and was the Training Partner of her firm, arranging and delivering training for the members of her firm. She’s a brilliant tutor and lecturer and an expert on teaching and learning.

So I am very fortunate that she has taken the time to write this guest post. If I am the overexcitable puppy or “good cop”, Gillian has decided to take the mantle of the archetypal “bad cop”.

What she has to say here is invaluable, and I urge you to take in every word.

Bad Cop

It goes without saying that I am delighted to be invited to make a contribution to this blog. Snigdha and I worked together for many years and I hope she will agree with me when I say that we have a lot of mutual respect and admiration for each other.

On beginning the BPTC course you will be filled with hope, excitement, anticipation and positivity. 

I have therefore chosen to play “bad cop” by setting out the reality of the task you have ahead of you.

You have all successfully completed the law course and the aptitude test which allowed you entry onto the BPTC. It is likely that you have never failed an assessment in your life. It is likely that your ambition is to achieve an “outstanding”, the highest possible grade mark for the BPTC. For some students it is possible that the BPTC could bring about a change to all that.

Some students have told me that they feel the aptitude test may not be a fully accurate gauge of a person’s ability either to achieve an “outstanding” on the course or in some cases, even to pass the course. It is a fact that in theory you are all starting the course at the same level. It is a fact that as far as the centrally set assessments of professional ethics on 14th March 2016, civil litigation on 30th March 2016 and criminal litigation on 1st April 2016 are concerned, you will all be sitting the same assessments.

Take a look at the statistics for the April 2015 centrally set assessments, as set out in the chair’s report. https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/qualifying-as-a-barrister/bar-professional-training-course/bptc-centralised-assessments/chair's-report/

I have summarised them here. For 2015, the pass rates were: 
- professional ethics 56.7%
- civil litigation evidence and remedies 58% (the BSB website report mis-names this paper)
- criminal litigation evidence and sentencing 62.5%

So take a look at the other students in your lecture or in your small group. Statistically about half of you will fail ethics and civil litigation and a third of you criminal litigation. Remember that those who failed in April 2015 were equally as well qualified as you are to follow the BPTC course.

Time is of the essence. There is much less than an academic year in which to reach the level required to pass these centrally set assessments. And these are assessments which may be very different in style from the ones in which you have so far found success. Not only that, but all the other assessments on the course are set and marked internally by each provider and it is likely that your first final assessment could be as early as January 2016, with others fitted in between then and your first centrally set assessment. Do heed all those warnings about keeping up-to-date with your work and with the filing of all your course papers.

Therefore, at a time when all around you are focusing on the promising beginnings on a new course, I would like you to focus on the endgame. By this I mean the assessments making up the BPTC qualification. I am a great believer in students having transparency and knowledge about what they will be assessed on, the criteria which need to be fulfilled to be successful in the assessment and the way in which they will be assessed. I will mostly use my specialist subject of civil litigation to clarify what I mean by this.

First, be aware of the contents of your syllabus, otherwise known as “the required content”, which for civil litigation begins on page 25 of the BPTC Handbook. This can be accessed on the Bar Standards Board website. Here is a link to it.
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media/1689434/bar_professional_training_course_and_covers_sept_15__revised_.pdf
The required content for the remainder of the BPTC is also set out on the adjoining pages of the Handbook.

Secondly, be aware of the assessment criteria. Here I am referring to the assessments which are set and marked internally by each individual provider. Your provider will make you aware of these. Do not ignore them. Have them in front of you for each piece of work you do for that subject and make sure that you fulfil the criteria.

Thirdly, be aware of the format of the assessment.

The format of the centrally set assessments is that of multiple choice questions (MCQs) and short answer questions (SAQs). So gone are the days when you could simply “learn and churn” a set of notes to pass an assessment; gone are the days when you could impress an examiner with your flowery ideas and original thought. 

Generally, on the BPTC course (as well as when you are practising professionally) I would say that you need to get used to setting out the chronology of events when preparing your papers, to dealing with your briefs in a logical and structured way and then in addition to applying your knowledge to give practical advice and opinions. On top of that, the centrally set assessments require you to respond in MCQ or SAQ format. 

Yet if between a half and a third of very bright students failed one or more of the centrally set assessment in April 2015, the key to passing civil litigation cannot be as simple as learning the facts and selecting the correct answer on an MCQ. For me, the key is not only learning and knowing the CPR rules required on the syllabus, it is actually understanding what each rule is trying to achieve and also how on any given set of facts, rules from separate areas of the syllabus can or should be used and may therefore be tested in the same question. I have several suggestions as to how this understanding may be achieved. 

Unusually, rather than advising you on what to do, I have chosen to advise you on what not to do.

DO NOT treat each area of the syllabus as a self-contained item.

DO NOT choose to learn only some areas of the syllabus, leaving others out, in the hope that what is tested is what you have learnt.

DO NOT borrow notes from any student who was previously on the course as the law may have changed since then, the CPR may have changed since then (there are several supplements every year), the syllabus has certainly changed for students being assessed in April 2016.

DO NOT use practice MCQ or SAQ questions that you have obtained from a previous year’s students or from students at a different provider as they may now be out of date.

DO NOT choose to wait until a few weeks before the civil litigation assessment before you begin to “revise” it. Remember this is not a “learn and churn” assessment: you need to understand it in order to be able to answer the questions. That understanding should come from your own work throughout the year (and this can include work that you undertake in self-appointed study groups with your colleagues), not only from a few weeks of “revision”.

No doubt you will be taking notes from many sources over the coming months; in lectures, in small group sessions, from the CPR itself, from further reading. Thus from a standing start with no BPTC knowledge (and therefore no understanding) what you need to do between now and the assessment is to expand your knowledge and understanding. Once you have the understanding you will hopefully find it easier to answer the MCQ and SAQ style questions the assessment. To prepare for the assessment, successful students often marshall their notes into one meaningful bundle, before contracting all of that down into a few pages of “memory joggers”.

DO NOT, therefore, work from any contracted down notes prepared by somebody else. You need to do all the work yourself so that the memory jogger notes that you use have meaning because you understand the expanded knowledge that lies behind them.

DO NOT miss the opportunity of sitting any mock assessments provided to you by your provider or via your provider from the Bar Standards Board. It would be madness not to organise your time so that you give yourself the opportunity of sitting the assessment in conditions as close to that of the actual assessment as possible. It would be madness to sit the real assessment and only then meet the format and timing of the real assessment for the first time.

DO NOT prepare for tutorials/practise for assessments in a way that is any different from that in which you will actually be assessed. Here I am referring to written skills assessments. I understand that different providers have different approaches to the written skills assessment. I recommend that you find out now which one your provider adopts.
If every student has to handwrite the actual written skills assessment, it would be madness to prepare your opinions or drafts for small group sessions/tutorials or to submit your mock assessments by word processing them. Creating documents which hit the assessment criteria when handwriting, is a very different skill to creating documents which hit the assessment criteria when word processing them.

If every student has to type the actual written skills assessment, then do your preparation for sessions/assessments by typing.

If your provider allows you to choose between the hand written method and type written method of assessment, spend some time working out which one actually suits you more, before coming to your final decision.

If every student has to handwrite the actual written skills assessment and you have, say, medical reasons for needing to type, then do not hesitate to contact the appropriate tutor at your provider NOW to set things in motion so that this may happen.

DO NOT forget that you are only human. It is human to fail an assessment, even though you may have done everything humanly possible to prepare yourself for it. Remember it happened to a large number of bright students in the April 2015 assessments. In my opinion, there is no shame in this. It is frustrating and annoying and if it happens to you, you will have to deal with it. When, or if, you are collecting your pension, probably at the age of 70+, then 2016 will seem like a long way in the distant past. By that time nobody will know or care that you failed one assessment decades ago.

DO NOT be too proud to ask for a deferral of an assessment or to make a mitigating circumstances application where appropriate. There is no rush to complete the course, although it would be everyone’s ideal to complete it in the academic year that you began it if you are studying it full time. Do not rely on your proven ability to pass assessments on previous courses if that means you would sit a BPTC assessment when you really are too ill to do so or when unusual circumstances in your life mean that you are not in the best place either physically or emotionally to take the assessment. The consequences of a full failure of the course in 2016 may be worse for you than the joy of passing it at a future date. 

Remember that unless you achieve a marginal fail in a single resit; please see page 135 of the BPTC handbook 
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media/1689434/bar_professional_training_course_and_covers_sept_15__revised_.pdf
then you only have two attempts at each assessment. In my opinion, passing the BPTC has to be your priority, not necessarily attempting an assessment in the early part of 2016, if there are bona fide reasons allowing you to defer. If there are, you could be taking an assessment ‘as if for the first time’ in August 2016, rather than taking it for the second and final time. Surely it is better to qualify later than not at all.

DO NOT hesitate to ask for extra help. The tutors want you to do well. Please feel free to contact me on gwoodworth.upfish.law@gmail.com

DO NOT underestimate the short amount of time you have to get to final assessment standard on this course. I finish with a radical point to ponder. If you are considering applying for a pupillage during this academic year, there is a possible conundrum. You need to pass the BPTC in order to take a pupillage. Should you be devoting your full attention to passing the BPTC? How realistic is it that you will have the time to give as much attention as you should to making pupillage applications, whilst concentrating on passing the BPTC? Remember you are only human. When, or if, you are collecting your pension, probably at the age of 70+ …etc!  Having an extra year’s legal experience under your belt after successful completion if the BPTC, for example as a para legal, may serve to enhance your pupillage application.

I trust that I have given you some food for thought and hope that this blog contributes to you addressing the required effort to the BPTC for the whole of this year. 

I wish all of you every success.

Gillian Woodworth 
October 2015

P.S. Snigdha has suggested that you may be interested to know that my book " BPTC revision: Prepare to Pass Civil Litigation, Evidence and Remedies 2015-2016" is scheduled to be available from Amazon or from www.lulu.com. accessed through the Union Jack flag by the end of 2015.