How to Cambridge

First, congrats to both of you on making it to Trinity you beat some tough
competition to get here. The next year of adjusting to life in Cam will be
hard, but your interviewers chose you because they recognised how
capable you are. There are some things you can do to make this process
easier, and I thought Id jot a few of the ones Id liked to have known
before I came to Trin.
Finn Kristensen:
First, as my DoS once said to me, Law is 90% perspiration and 10%
inspiration. Doing well requires a pretty big time commitment so think
carefully about your extracurriculars, your work/life balance and your
goals before you arrive. I rowed for Trins first boat in Michaelmas and Lent
(9 sessions per week), helped organise the Uni Law Soc balls, became Vice
President of the TCSU in Lent, Logistics Officer for our May Ball in Easter
term and got a 2:1 in my exams. Getting a first requires a lot of work and
was never going to happen with all the stuff I was doing, So my first piece
of advice is to define your goals and what you want to do across the year
and make sure they fit. If you want a first, you can probably get away with
one high level (college first team/uni team) sport or two committee
positions in societies.
Your papers
In short, some are harder than others and the difficult aspects of each one
vary.
1. Constitutional very conceptual and not many cases. Usually around
four big ones for each supervision, apart from your two Judicial Review
supervisions towards the end of the year where that becomes like 15-20.
Generally youll have to read these cases in greater depth than for other
papers. The main trick for consti is to master the different academic views
on key concepts like parliamentary sovereignty so you can bring them all
together in an essay and come up with an original take on the question. I
found that consti required the least amount of time of the Part 1A papers.
2. Tort basically the opposite to consti really. Loads and loads and loads
and loads of cases - our largest supervision this year for Vicarious Liability,
Joint Liability, Contribution and Defences had 40 cases.... The trick with
tort is to get a clear idea of the development of the case law what
principle did [x] case establish and why was it overruled 40 years later?
Does the principle apply to (y) circumstance? Best way to do well here is
to constantly review the cases maybe even for the previous supervision
too, but see how much time you have.
3. Civil civils a funny paper but I quite liked it. Its literally Roman law
and how the Romans approached thorny legal issues such as the theft of

peacocks and injuries inflicted on one-eyed slaves. Your first supervision

will probably be on sources make sure you nail this and get a clear idea
of the sources. Justinians Digest (this is a v good website for the Digest)
and Gaiuss Institutes (see here youll probably have to play around with
the website to get the full thing) will be your references points for the year
ahead.
4. Crim This is a renowned for being quite difficult. As with tort, lots of
cases on particular issues and you have to make sure you dont become
bogged down in the detail. The trick with crim problem questions is to be
snappy and approach each issue from the most serious offence you could
charge first then work your way down to less serious offences if you think
you could charge them and theres an area of doubt about the most
serious offence. Dont hang around too much with extended discussion in
these problem questions (but its obviously different for essays) and just
give the actus reus and mens rea elements of the offence with some
cases as authority for your statements of law.
5. Freshfields dont worry about this yet. Its not hard and wont take
more than a day or two at most. Youll have some compulsory seminars
later in the year and youll hear more on this then.
NOTE TO SELF (JARVIS)
Put in a bit more effort and at some point in time, things will click for you
and youll find a clarity that was previously missing. Also and this is
something that I really only appreciated much later dont just focus on
legal doctrine or rules. Try to get under the skin of those rules to
understand what they are trying to achieve. If you can do this, the law will
take on a clarity that you cannot even begin to imagine. You will
understand the social construct that the law is and appreciate the context
within which it facilitates the workings of a civilised society.