Hey guys!
I scored a raw 50 in legal studies in 2022, and I’d like to share some tips and advice with you 😃.
DISCLAIMER: These are just some things that worked for me, and may not work for everybody, as we all learn differently. However, if you are willing to give these a shot, they might just work!
Learning the content
I handwrote all my notes for legal, though not on paper. I used my stylus and apple pencil to take digitalised handwritten notes on my laptop, but then switched to iPad half-way through the year. Personally, I can attest to (and evidence supports) that handwriting notes can be very good for memory retention. Not that there’s a major issue with typing, but at times, you may type quickly just to get down everything the teacher is saying in class, and, when the year gets busy with assessments, you might not revisit them, and it can add up to lots of content that can cause stress later. That is why I preferred to do things slowly, but make sure I was confident with the content. An advantage with handwriting on iPad/tablets is that you can paste diagrams/tables into your notes, however I didn’t do this for legal, but rather typed out strength/weakness tables into my class notes OneNote (yep, I sort of couldn’t be bothered handwriting that many tables, there’s a lot! That being said, all the notes in each Area of Study were handwritten, it was just the tables that I typed).
I proceeded to type up my handwritten notes into digital flashcards, around every week. These flashcards included definitions and explanations of legal terms and concepts, and tables of strengths and weaknesses, which are very, very important in legal! I would revisit these flashcards approximately a week or two before SACs, in the train, on the way to school, at school, at home, during my shifts, whenever I had time, making sure I was confident over the content, and could recall important information to a great detail- especially for memorising specific cases in Unit 4.
I believed in the wisdom my textbook:
In terms where I was taking notes, I didn’t take many notes in class, as I figured taking notes from the textbook covered the content in more detail, which made me feel more confident that I wasn’t missing out on any important conceptual detail. This meant that class time was an opportunity for me to apply this content and engage in class discussions, ask (lots) and answer questions (regardless of whether I was right or wrong). I followed the textbook very, very closely, as it is written by people who know the study design in great detail, and also contains lots of great practice resources.
** Answering questions:**
I then proceeded to answer the textbook questions that my teacher assigned- note this was NOT all the questions in the entire textbook, but a selection of ones my teacher thought would best allow me to apply the content and work on the required skills. Skills- a very important aspect of mastering legal, because its more than just reciting the content from the textbook- its how you use the content to structure your response in a way that satisfies the marking scheme and answers the question.
At the start of the year, I was a bit startled by how many command terms there are in legal, and thought that I might mistake one for the other, and therefore not answer the question. And, this was something I learnt in my first SAC, where I lost marks for not providing arguments for both sides (i.e. strengths/weaknesses, benefits/limitations) in a question that asked to ‘Assess’- a command term I’d never seen before. But I knew that it wouldn’t take long to memorise the structure of each command term. My teacher provided us with the VCAA ‘Glossary of Command Terms’ that gives a very concise summary of what each command term asks, but for that reason it is very broad, as it is written to apply to all subjects- I needed to find a way to understand how it would apply to legal specifically. So, what better way to test your skill at a subject than doing practice responses/asking questions? I sent my teacher what I believed a structure for ‘Discuss the extent to which’, ‘Evaluate’ and other high order command terms would look like for feedback, from which I made necessary changes. The main way you can improve in legal, is if you change the way you think, to the way VCAA wants you to think. For me, it was a blessing that my teacher is a VCAA assessor, so all I had to do was keep annoying her with lots (and I mean lots and lots) of questions!
Essentially, the command term/task word + the number of marks determines how long you should spend on your response, and what you should include/NOT include in your response. What I mean to say is, you don’t need to write an intro, 3 body paragraph and conclusion for a 5 mark question- it wastes time, and there’s a good chance some of it won’t be relevant, or you may accidentally write something incorrect and risk losing marks. Even on the day of the exam, I was sending past high achievers messages to confirm whether my mark allocation was correct or not- BUT- I was confident with these well beforehand, so it was more a last minute confirmation! How many paragraphs, the structure, and how much time you spend on a question is a judgement you make after doing lots of practice, and if you end up finishing early, you can always add more! For me personally, I can write a lot in small amounts of time, so I always ended up using extra space in just about every SAC. In fact, in the exam, I finished up all the extra space given in the book, and had to ask for a new book to finish off some of my responses! However, this is something I DO NOT recommend. Overwriting in general is something very debatable when it comes to answering questions under timed conditions. You need to make sure you are able to write fast enough to finish all the questions , so you don’t leave out others due to overwriting. Also, overwriting means you might have less time to proof-read your responses. I didn’t have time to proofread in my SACs or the exam, as I was too busy writing. In saying this, I would always think about what I would write, and thus was reasonably confident with what I wrote most of the time, except for a few curveball questions. This confidence again will build up over practice.
When it comes to different command terms, I was confident with almost all of the command terms’ structures around middle of the year, however there were a few I was confused with- for example, the structure for ‘Analyse’ questions. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t afraid to ask my teacher how to structure this type of response. In fact, I made a joke in class one day, saying that an analyse question is basically an ‘explain question on steroids’! My teacher loved that, because, well it’s sort of accurate! By ‘steroids’, it means that you answer ‘analyse’ to more detail than you would an ‘explain’. You dive deep, and include more information than you would for an ‘explain’. You can weave in benefits and limitation points as well to give your response more depth.
Scoring marks
Unfortunately, VCAA does not particularly reward students for knowing the content. Instead, VCAA will reward those who can satisfy the marking scheme in a given period of time, where the end of year exam plays a huge part in this. This is, despite having really high SAC scores in a school (regardless of whether it is a competitive school or not), lower performance on the end of year exam can hinder your study score quite a bit.
So what’s the takeaway from this? Yes, you must know the content to a very good detail for legal, but you must also be able to use this content effectively when answering questions. You need to show ‘mastery over the language’, as my teacher says, and weave in legal terminology and arguments in a way that remains to the point, and shows the assessor that you know what you are talking about, so they can award you marks!
ASKING questions
I thought I should make a separate section on this, just to emphasise how important it is!! I always asked questions in class, out of class, essentially whenever a question popped into my head. Sometimes I would type out a list of questions and arrange meetings with my teacher (especially before SACs and the exam), where I would essentially have a Q&A session with my teacher, ticking off the questions one by one. I know lots of people fall in the trap of feeling embarrassed to ask questions because others might perceive you differently, but to be honest- I didn’t care. Everyone learns differently, so I had come to terms with the fact that I learn by asking lots of questions rather than self-learning or grasping content immediately. Also, its important to realise that you will regret not asking questions beforehand, when you see a question on your SAC or the exam that you refused to ask your teacher/peers about; which is why I have absolutely no regrets with the amount of questions I annoyed my teacher and past students with, because it paid off in the end!
In terms of what sorts of questions you should ask, it doesn’t really matter. Don’t try and make your question sound ‘intelligent’ in fear that it’s a ‘dumb question’ (no such thing exists, trust me). Ask exactly what you want to ask, because if you don’t, you might not get the answer that helps you resolve your doubts. For me, a lot of questions were based on links between concepts that aren't explicitly mentioned in the textbook, but implied. E.g. The difference between common law and precedent, or ‘Is precedent only made through statutory interpretation/where there is no existing law? Can the ratio decidendi of a normal case without statutory interpretation still be precedent?’ But a lot of my content questions were asking my teacher to proofread my arguments for a potential SAC/exam question, where we would discuss which arguments are stronger/have more depth to argue, and which were not. I did this by examining the strengths/weakness tables in the textbook, where I would highlight the strong arguments in green, medium in yellow, etc, and ask my teacher on which ones she thought were strong/medium, and change the table accordingly.
Regrets
There are some things I wish I had done differently- though I am glad it all paid off in the end:
Handwriting notes: Because I handwrote my notes on my laptop/iPad, this took up a lot of my time, meaning I had less time to focus on my other subjects. In saying this, handwriting seems to work for me in terms of memorisation of content, so I might continue handwriting notes in the future.
Not having a study plan: I’ve never seemed to ‘let a sheet of paper tell me what to do’, because in VCE you’ll notice things pop up fast, so it takes a lot of organisation to document it on a timetable/planner. So I didn’t have a set amount of hours I would do legal- I sort of just went with the flow and did what I felt like 😃
Not making a glossary: This one’s interesting. My teacher told us at the start of the year to make a legal terminology glossary with definitions and/or examples if required, as it helps you organise a lot of the ‘memory work’ into one place. I had a go at making a glossary in units 1 and 2, but gave up pretty quickly, because I thought that it would be better if I weave definitions throughout my course notes rather than cram them all into one place. Why? Because by weaving these key definitions in your notes, you will automatically be forced to revise all the content (in fear that you will forget something), rather than neglecting theory by prioritising a glossary- if that makes sense. This approach worked for me, but it might not work for everyone, so keep in mind there’s an individual aspect to it as well (everyone learns differently). Who knows, maybe in next year I might try making a glossary!
Stressing out too much: I definitely did not know how to cope with the pressures of SACs and other assessments, to the point where I would have nightmares of a bad SAC and a study score I was unhappy with! Do NOT stress out, it makes things worse! Yes, a healthy level of stress motivates you to do your best, but too much stress will deteriorate your performance- I speak from experience. I barely slept the night before my first SAC, in fear of how this SAC would determine my ATAR and define my future (I know, dramatic on reflection...) anyway, that SAC happened to be my lowest score, so for the rest of my SACs, I was stressed, but no way near as stressed as the first one! Same applies for the exam, for my first 3/4 exam, I was way too nervous that I couldn’t read properly during the exam- the words weren’t fully making sense and I could feel my head turning hot. But for legal, I was much, much more chilled out, and I did a lot better in legal!
So, that’s the end of my tips, I hope you find them useful! I wish you all the best for legal, and am happy to answer questions!😃
Please email me on simgvce1@gmail.com if you wish to purchase my Notes+ Practice responses google drive (reasonable prices 😃), or have any questions!
