Category: Guest Post

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Guest Post: A 3rd year’s hints and tips, all things law and non-law

About me

My name is Lia, and I am a 3rd year undergraduate law student. The modules I am doing this year are Employment, Careers, Company, Mediation, Evidence and Commercial. I am originally from Peterborough but love Newcastle so much that I want to stay here after I’ve finished studying! My career aspirations are hopefully to become a commercial solicitor in Newcastle.

What do I know now that I wish I knew when I first started?

My 1st year was very different to the norm as I was the Covid year, which made my 2nd year even harder having to learn to adapt to in-person teaching. My advice would be to work 9-5 during the week and give yourself as much time off in the evenings so that you can go out, hang out with your friends, and do extracurricular societies and sports clubs.

1st year and 2nd year are all about making mistakes and learning from them, so never be too hard on yourself. It is more important to always get feedback from coursework and exams, knowing that whatever questions you have other students, the librarians and lecturers will all be able to help.

Seminars are also everyone’s saviours as they literally ask you to prepare the exam questions. I think you should prepare these to your best ability and try do some follow up work on the seminar after you have had everyone’s input.

Client Interviewing

In my 2nd year I entered the client interviewing competition with my friend, Daisy. This was highly rewarding as we learnt how to conduct ourselves when meeting clients and eventually won the competition overall.

The best part of our prize was that we got free work experience at Ward Hadaway, a regional law firm in Newcastle. I completed seats in Real Estate and Commercial litigation whilst I was there.

Text reads: To the winners Daisy and Lia, Newcastle University Law Society Client Interviewing Competition 2022. Two photographs show each winner smiling.
Image from Newcastle Uni Law Society Instagram @nulawsociety

Now, in my 3rd year, I am one of the client interviewing officers this year for the law society. This year Daisy and I are hoping to make the competition better than ever and help participants develop their skills by offering more training sessions than previous years and more competitions. I really advise any 1st or 2nd years to do this as an extra-curricular as it doesn’t take up too much time, looks great on your CV and is judged by Ward Hadaway solicitors who offer money and work experience as a prize!

Favourite Places…

To Study

To Eat Out

For Drinks

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GUEST POST – LAW EXAM REVISION WEBSITES AND TIPS

Law Reports

Hi I’m Caitlin, and as a final year law student I would say I’m used to exams by now!

I’m going to give you my top  5 resources for exam revision techniques, and top 5 exam resources to get you all set up for May’s exams.

TOP 5 EXAM REVISION TIPS:

  1. Focus on seminars – seminar questions are often set to prepare you for the exam, whether it’s a key case, precedent or the best way to tackle a problem question! It’s definitely worth spending that extra time preparing and doing seminars, so that you can go over these as an exam topic.
  2. Make notes as you go along – you might not always have time but spend an extra hour or so after the lecture making revision notes, and highlighting the key cases/points of law. You’ll thank yourself when it comes to exam time.
  3. Make essay plans – identify the key points of law, and look at past exam papers to see what could be asked.
  4. Identify your weak spots early and go to your tutor/seminarist/lecturer to iron them out now.
  5. Don’t rely on preparing topics – if the exam has 3 questions for you to answer, don’t just learn three topics! Always learn a few more topics than you have to answer.

TOP 5 REVISION RESOURCES:

  1. Elawresources – good case summaries to break down the points of law in really basic terms.
  2. Learnmore: Expand your legal mind – has everything from preparation to moots, to videos and presentations!
  3. Concentrate Revision Guides – these cost around £5-10 each but really break down key points of law.
  4. BAILII – British and Irish Legal Information Institution.
  5. Lecture revision sessions – most lecturers will put these on, but make the most of them by emailing/preparing in advance what topic/area you’d like to see covered.

Good luck in your exams, they’ll be over before you know it!

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Guest post: Creative Writing Society ‘Write-ins’

Sitting down to write for twelve hours might seem like an impossible task, but Newcastle University’s Creative Writing society didn’t back down. On November 3rd and 24th, the Philip Robinson Library was host to our two annual ‘Write-ins’.

The Write-ins are organised to coincide with National Novel Writing Month (or ‘NaNoWriMo’) in which participants are challenged to write 50,000 words in a single month. The challenge is just as daunting as it might sound — to achieve that goal, you would have to write 1,667 words a day on average!

On the nights themselves, we were at the library from 7.00 a.m. until 7.00 p.m. Copious amounts of drinks and snacks were needed to support ourselves through the nights and make sure we had the energy to keep going. Library staff had been kind enough to decorate Your Space with posters and banners. We even had our own whiteboard that we used to keep track of everyone’s word counts.

By the end of the second night, one of our writers even managed to break the 50,000 word total! In total, we spent twenty four hours together, not just working on our own projects, but also sharing ideas and having a good time. The great company (and even greater snacks) made our task seem a little bit less difficult.

Throughout the night, we also took over the Library’s arts liaison team’s Twitter account (@ncllibarts) to share our exploits. You can find all the tweets from the night here (https://twitter.com/i/moments/1065265041694486529) with most of them getting progressively stranger as we grew more and more tired.

We’d just like to say a massive thank you to everyone involved in making this event happen, from members of committee to the library staff. The society can’t wait for our next annual Write-ins, even if we always need a lot of sleep the next day to catch up on the zzz’s!

Lucy Elliott, Newcastle University Creative Writing Society’s President