Dr Kumah Esq.
Dr. C.R. Kumah Esq.
Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Ghana, 2024 (LLB, Professional Law Course)
Doctorate in Finance from SMC University, Switzerland in 2018
MPhil in Economics, University of Ghana, 2008
BA in Economics, University of Ghana, 2005
The study of law is a long and winding one, but gratifying in the end. Having successfully gone through the LLB programme, the biggest dream and desire of any law student is to pass the coveted Ghana School of Law Entrance exam to be enrolled in the 2-year Professional Law Course (PLC) to be called as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Ghana.
Though it sounds easy, the journey is mostly not too smooth, and for most people, the Entrance exam has been their biggest nightmare, having written it more than once. So, you can imagine the joy of seeing your name on the pass list of the Entrance exam? It’s a miracle and a dream come true! This was just how I felt when I saw my index number on the pass list for the Entrance exam in 2022. I immediately broke down in tears of joy, knelt down and thanked God. I felt immense gratitude to God because at the time I had given up all hope and did not think it was possible, but God made it possible. After the tears, it was all joy and I immediately took my phone and started sharing the good news with my loved ones.
This excitement was however, short-lived, because I suddenly had to reorganise myself to be able to fit the Professional Law Course into my already-busy schedule. First, I had to work on securing permission from work to pursue the Professional Course and unfortunately, I had limited time within which to secure this permission and so I had to do a lot of running around. By the grace of God, I successfully secured the needed permission and was glad that my work was not going to stand in the way of my law dream. The next thing was to choose the timetable schedule that best suited me, and I chose the Friday and Saturday group. I knew this was going to be at the expense of time I had to spend with my family on Saturdays but I explained to them that this was going to be for a short period and they understood and agreed to cooperate with me.
However, the aspect I felt the least prepared for was the course itself. For some reason, personally I did not know anyone who was in Part 2 to have requested for learning materials from the person. I only knew someone who was part of those called to the Bar that year, and so as expected, I asked him to kindly share any learning materials he had with me. Unfortunately, I did not get anything from him and so all I had were the recommended textbooks and reading materials, as well as slides shared by lecturers during lectures. This meant that I could not learn much ahead of lectures and so everything was new to me at lectures.
Apart from that, I struggled with apportioning my time effectively for all the subjects, and as a result, a few weeks to exams, I had so much to read, to the extent that I was sleeping for less than four hours every day. By the grace of God, I successfully went through Part 1 having passed all six papers (better still seven subjects because two subjects, Accounting and Law Practice Management, have been combined and is written as one exam paper) but it was a pretty tough journey and by the time Part 1 exams were over, I was so stressed with my face breaking out with serious acne.
My experiences during Part 1 of the PLC is what inspired this article, to make Part 1 easier than what I had. This article is to make your Part 1 experience better and smoother than how mine was, by telling you some of the things I did not know before embarking on the PLC, and also to caution you to avoid the mistakes I made while preparing for the exams at the end of Part 1. I am confident that this article will be beneficial to you. Best wishes!
How to survive part one
Permit me to share with you ten tips to help you sail through Part 1 smoothly. I can assure you that if you take these tips seriously, you would successfully transition to Part II. I call them the ten sure tips for a smooth sail into Part 2. Let them guide you in your Part 1 journey and you will be closer to your dream of becoming a lawyer.
Attend all the lectures
I call this the sacred rule which is not to be sacrificed. You cannot successfully go through Part 1 if you make it your habit to miss lectures. This is because as the name suggests, the course is a Professional course, and so the training is geared towards preparing you for practice. Hence, you must necessarily be at lectures to understand the various topics that are treated by the lecturers.
Apart from understanding the topics, the lecturers drop hints during lectures. They tell you the areas to pay attention to when reading and the areas that are highly examinable. Even if you get notes from someone, there are certain things that your classmates are not likely to jot down in their notes. This is why you need to be at lectures to highlight these highly examinable areas so that you pay attention to them when you are learning. I know that there will be a few times you may miss lectures for reasons beyond your control, but I urge you to attend as many as you can so that you do not miss any vital information from lecturers.
Yet again, Part 1 involves a lot of drafting, in fact almost all the subjects have aspects where you have to draft, and for these courses, the compulsory questions in the exams are mostly on drafting. Therefore, you must be at lectures to learn how to draft the right way. The best people to teach you how to draft are the lecturers themselves and so do not miss any lecture, because that may be the session that your lecturer may be teaching how to draft. Well, I know that you will come across some prepared notes that may have various examples of drafting. Though these may help to some extent, I reiterate the fact that your lecturers are the best people to teach you how to draft, after all, they are the people who are going to mark your exam papers. So why don’t you attend lectures for them to show you how they expect you to do it. Kindly take this seriously.
Try and make up for any lecture you miss, because that may be the session during which an examinable topic may be treated. This happened to me in Accounting. For the first time there was a full question on Cashbook in the Accounting exam and during the exam I was convinced that our lecturer did not treat the topic. Well, I escaped that question and went to do a more difficult question, which I could only answer partly. After the exam I was shocked to learn from my friends that our lecturer taught the topic during the last but one lecture, can you just imagine that? Do you know I would have failed Accounting if I could not attempt those two questions I did, because we were given three questions to choose two to answer, and by virtue of my absence during the lecture on Cashbook, I only had two questions to answer? Why would you want to put yourself through this stress? By the grace of God, I passed the paper but the feeling in the exam room was simply unnerving. It is too costly to miss lectures and so try not to miss them. Try and avoid that. Get notes from your friends when you miss lectures.
Engage those in Part 2 and get as many resources and materials as possible from them.
There is nothing new under the sun, and that’s what the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 1:9. The scripture continues to say that the thing that has been is that which shall be, and this is very true, because for whatever you are doing, someone else has done it before. Wherever you are someone has been there before. There is no need to reinvent the wheels. In Part 1, you will be learning what those in Part 2 learnt in Part 1, so find someone in Part 2 and kindly request for notes and learning materials from the person.
Even if you do not know anyone in Part 2, ask some of your Part 1 mates, they may have materials from those who have gone ahead to share with you. The main point here is that, do not just be there without trying to get as many resources as you can. There will always be a thing or two to learn from these materials and they will also help you to stay ahead of the class. If you are able to get these materials and especially read them before lectures, you will be able to follow the lectures better and will also be able to ask questions on the confusing areas you may have encountered during your personal reading. Try this and you will be more comfortable at lectures.
Get the recommended textbooks, cases and articles, but do not forget to use the Manuals as your guide. The lecturers would recommend some textbooks that you must necessarily get, as well as articles to read and some cases as well. Please take all of them seriously and get your personal copies of these recommended textbooks. You need to try and get the key textbooks yourself and read them. Also make sure to read the cases especially those you find in the manual and brief them in accordance with the relevant legal principles in them. Briefing your cases while learning and making notes helps for easy reference during exam revision.
Another useful material for your learning is the Course Manual that the school will give you for each of the courses. You cannot successfully cover the entire course if you do not use the manual as the guide for your reading. These manuals contain the various topics to be treated under each of the courses and concise notes on all the topics. The manual also contains the relevant cases and articles to be read for the various topics. The manuals are very well structured and detailed to help you in your reading and you will be given copies by the school. Do not just collect them and dump them somewhere. Always carry them along to lectures so that you can follow the lectures and use them for your personal reading as well. If you fail to be guided by the Manuals, you are likely to miss certain important topics that may later show up in exams. The Manual is to be a guide and so use it as intended. This means that the Manual cannot replace your textbooks and other recommended texts. The Manual gives you the structure which will be filled in by the textbooks and other texts. Take every course seriously and do not underestimate any course. A fail in any three courses will make you repeat Part 1, irrespective of the three courses. This is one of the most important things that anyone can tell you about the courses you do in Part 1, that every single course matter, and so you need to have the right attitude towards every course. Some Part 1 students are tempted to think that some courses are more technical than others and so they should pay more attention to those ones at the expense of the others. This is highly untrue! I have personally heard a few students say of some courses, that they are everyday things and so one can use common knowledge to answer them. This is false! This notion unfortunately reflects in their attitudes towards lectures. I have personally heard some lecturers complain about how they saw a full class during a lecture before theirs, and as soon as that class was over, they saw some students leave the class even though they were aware there was another class. I have seen people easily pass the so-called technical courses and sadly fail the supposed easy or general-knowledge courses.
It is worth noting that the so-called easy courses that some students tend to underestimate are the most technical. An example is Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR for short). Although ADR (involving negotiation, mediation, arbitration, etc.) sounds like an everyday thing, it is highly technical, and if you do not attend lectures and pay attention to what the lecturers say, you can easily fail that course. I found drafting in ADR to be one of the most demanding because there are specific requirements for the drafting and if you fail to include them in your drafting, you can easily deviate and fail the paper.
See, the rule is that, if you fail any three of the Part 1 courses, you will repeat Part 1. It does not matter the three courses you fail, once you fail them you repeat the year. So why then will you spend all your time and attention on what you perceive as the technical courses to score say, even 90% in them, and then risk failing what you think is not so technical, so that you repeat Part 1. Spare yourself that stress and apportion your time equally among all the seven courses. Have the right attitude towards all the courses, attend all the lectures and have time to learn all the subjects. When you do this, you will smoothly sail through Part 1. Be determined to pass all the courses in Part 1, once and for all. It is quite traumatic to repeat Part 1.
It takes a community to successfully go through the course and so be nice to your classmates. When you do, they will always look out for you and support you. It takes a community to successfully go through this course. The stress of the course can be overwhelming and interestingly, all students are exposed to the same stress. So, go through it together with your friends. I was so stressed at a point that I was even contemplating not writing the Part 1 exams. It took some friends in my study group to encourage me through the difficult times.
It takes a community and that community comprises those you sit in class with. When exams started, it became convenient to start learning at the Makola campus since that was closer to where I stayed. When I did, I met two classmates who in no time became my study mates and they were quite helpful to me. One of them had obviously read extensively and was on top of most of the topics. This classmate of mine could stand in front of the whiteboard and draft different things at the same time from her head. For some of the courses that required us to memorise some processes and steps, my class mate could pour the entire process from her head onto the board. She really helped me and most of the drafting she put on the white board came in the exams. The point I am making here is that, the journey is a long and difficult one, and you can hardly survive if you do not learn to relate very well with your class mates. Do not write anyone off, neither should you underestimate anyone, because a tip that may help you in the exam may come from an unexpected source.
For instance, the paper I personally was not too comfortable with was Accounting. This is because this was my first-time learning Accounting, and I felt that for an Economist like myself, some of the Accounting principles were difficult to comprehend. For instance, in Accounting, when an asset is increasing you debit that asset account and when that asset is decreasing you credit that asset account. I struggled with these Accounting principles because they did not add up in my mind. However, I still had to learn it to pass. Because I knew I had this challenge in Accounting, I devoted quite some time to it and also called on some friends to privately tutor me into understanding what I needed to, to pass the exam. So be friendly, so that you can be assisted when you are struggling with a course or topic.
Take drafting seriously, and start practicing early. You cannot be successful in Part 1 without drafting.
This is so crucial and it almost cost me for some of the subjects. For the seven courses (when Accounting and LPM are split) you study for Part 1, apart from Accounting and the Law of Evidence, there is drafting in the remaining subjects. Some of the subjects are heavily laden with drafting, for instance, Criminal Procedure, where you will need to know how to draft Charge Sheet, Bill of Indictment, Bail applications, Appeal applications, etc. Similarly, in Company and Commercial Practice, you need to know how to draft Minutes of Board Meeting, for instance, because it is a highly examinable area. There are standard instruments to be drafted in the other subjects and so you must necessarily know how to draft and it is better you start learning how to draft early, so that you do not come under intense pressure when exams are approaching.
What you can do is to take each subject and list all the instruments that have to be drafted in that subject, and then have a schedule to learn them one after the other. This will put you in a comfortable position for exams. You can fall on the Manuals, those in Part 2, as well as the other learning materials around to have an idea of the various drafting you need to learn and start practicing them early enough. You cannot successfully go through Part 1 if you do not know or learn how to draft. You can decide to practice how to draft on a daily basis. Join a study group, a serious one for that matter. Study groups are quite helpful and you cannot successfully go through the Part 1 course without being part of a study group. You will note that almost all the lecturers will emphasise this at lectures and so you cannot wish it away. Being part of a study group brings structure to your learning and also helps you to be disciplined about learning. I must say here that it is not being part of any group at all, but a serious one. If you realise that your study group is not a serious one, move on and join another one.
See, the duration for Part 1 is so limited that you cannot afford to waste any time at all. If you do not seem to see a serious group, talk to a few serious classmates of yours and if they agree, come together to form a group. Ensure that your group has a timetable where every subject is tackled during a day of the week. Get different members of the group to lead the discussions for different topics or subjects so that everyone gets involved.
If you are a busy person, you particularly need a study group because at study group meetings, different people will come and share what they have learnt with you and that will help you. Have a blend of people who are younger and have more time on their hands to read and will have a lot of information to share at your discussions.
When group assignments are given, be involved so that you can get the opportunity to learn, because some of these group assignments or tasks come in the exams.
Zoom has made study group discussions very easy. Though in-person meetings are essential, particularly when it comes to drafting and also for a subject like Accounting, most of the other topics can be conveniently discussed via zoom and so maximise the use of zoom.
Make time to study on your own. While being part of a study group is a great idea, you also need to make enough time to study on your own. Most times I realise that during study group discussions, people come to share what they have learnt. While what they share at these discussions are quite helpful, you need to make time on your own to read almost all the things for yourself, even to be sure that the information that your friends are sharing with you is the right one. Reading on your own also gives you the confidence to contribute during these study group discussions so that it does not appear as though you join the group to only take and not give back. That does not give a good impression of you.
My personal style when it came to learning on my own was to make notes on the various topics I read. So, you would typically see me with a lot of exercise books, apart from the note books I used for taking notes at lectures. I made my personal notes from reading into my exercise books. This helped me during exams so that I did not have to go back to the original textbooks. Apart from that, for every topic, you may have different materials that may treat it. So, making my own notes helped me to consolidate the various readings into concise notes on each of the topics, so that during the limited time for revision towards exams, I did not have to go back to all those materials to read them again. Again, read and brief the relevant cases when making your personal notes, highlight them with their principles for easy reference during revision.
Once I had made my notes, all I did during the revision week was to fetch these notes and go over them. Unfortunately, because I did not have adequate time to prepare before the exams, there was a lot of pressure on me in the revision weeks. Apart from my lecture notes, I found myself reading some of the topics for the very first time and that increased the pressure on me. Please avoid this by starting to read and make your personal notes early enough. The pressure from the exams is real, but you can moderate it by doing this.
Do not be deceived by the timing of the exams. It comes in no time, prepare ahead!
Solve past questions, because the trend of questions, particularly for some of the subjects hardly change. This is the golden rule for most courses and most exams. It is almost suicidal to write a particular exam without taking the time to go through past questions on that subject. You will be going on a wild goose chase. Past questions are helpful and you do not have to wait for a few days to exams before you start going through Past questions. In fact, you can be guided from day 1 by Past questions. Get all the past questions for the last ten years at least on each of the subjects and study the trends. You are likely to see that some questions come almost every year. For such questions, you need to master them, so that when you see them in your exams you can easily answer them. If you have time on your hands, you can have a book in which you answer past questions, so that when exams are approaching you can easily fall on them to refresh your memory. The most painful thing is to go into an exam hall and see a question you have seen before but you are not able to answer. Past questions are important.
Another benefit of using past questions to learn is that it helps you to know how to structure answers to questions under a particular topic. By this I mean that for most of the topics, there will be a lot of sub-sections, which means that you would have so many things to learn under each topic. What the past questions will help you to do is to inform you of the nature of questions that are set under each of the topics so that your reading becomes more structured and less tedious. So, read alongside past questions, because there is nothing new under the sun! The beauty is that, you do not have to look for the questions yourself, the vendors who sell textbooks on the various campuses and even those who do photocopies for the students can assist you with a compilation of all the past questions. Talk to them and grab a copy, you will be glad you did!
However, guard against doing selective learning or what we call “punching”. This is when you decide, based on your own analysis or past question trends to learn some topics and not learn others before the exams. This is one of the riskiest things you can do, and I will discourage that in no uncertain terms. This is because even if you master some topics, a question may come on that topic in the exam that may be difficult to answer. This means that even for the topics that you may have read, a question may come on that topic that may be tricky and you may not be able to answer it the best way possible. So please do not take chances, read everything. What I have always guarded against is going into an exam room not having read certain topics. I may not read certain topics extensively, but I always make sure I have a fair idea of all the topics. Even for Accounting that I did not like or understand, I tried to use the manual to go through all the topics. It is just unfortunate how I missed the section on Cash book. I think it was a small section under another topic, and because I may have missed that lecture, once I got there, I immediately skipped it and that almost cost me. As much as possible, try and read every topic before you enter the exam hall.
This means you need to have a fine balance. The fact that past questions are helpful does not mean that you must throw away your course manual and your lecture notes and only focus on past questions. Follow the course manual to cover all the topics, but make sure that for every topic, you identify all the past questions that have come on them and attempt to answer them. When you are able to do this, you will be in a good position to approach the exams.
11. Pray and trust God to see you through Part 1 successfully. To me, this is the most important tip. I am a Christian and so I believe in God and also in the power of prayer. I believe that without the help of God you cannot achieve anything in life, and so I devote prayer into everything I do. I pray about everything. Phil 4:6-7 (NLT).
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
The study of law comes with a lot of stress and anxiety, but the Bible encourages us to pray instead of being anxious. Carry everything to God in prayer and trust Him to see you through.
Proverbs 21:31 (New Living Translation) says The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.
Trust that the God who saw you through the entrance exam will not abandon you in Part 1 but will be with you and help you through the course.
There is an old saying that “Pray as though everything depended on God; and work as though everything depended on you.” This saying has been attributed to St. Augustine, St. Ignatius and John Wesley and that should be your approach to the course. Pray hard and also work hard, knowing that a false balance is an abomination to God. I prayed a lot all through the PLC and especially after exams, because at that point I just knew that it was only God who could intervene in the exams for me. So, trust God with all of your heart and He will not fail you.
As you pay heed to the thoughts shared above, I wish you a smooth transition to Part II and ultimately look forward to you joining us at the Bar!
Your friend, Claudia.
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