Jennifer McBride 

Hello, my name is Jenny McBride and I’m Learning and Development Programme Lead at Arthur Cox. Today we’re going to be discussing FE1 exam preparations and some practical tips for students who are sitting the FE1 exams. I’m joined today by Anna O’Doherty, who’s a trainee in our Technology and Innovation Group, and by Liam Cleary, who’s a trainee in our Environment and Planning Group. Liam, I might turn to you first for the first question. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience preparing for the FE1s and how you approached it? 

Liam Cleary 

So my kind of general rule of thumb was about two months out. That was when I kind of started to begin thinking about the route I was going to take to my study for the FE1s. I suppose I would start initially, not a very intense way of going about it, you know, looking generally over the topics, kind of choosing the ones I wanted to do, I would base that on previous exam questions, examiner reports I found were very, very helpful, just to kind of decide which direction I was going to do or take rather. Importantly as well, if you’re doing multiple FE1s in one sitting, it’s very useful to kind of merge topics that might appear on different FE1s to kind of minimise your workload, I suppose, in the end, and pick a lot of topics that might overlap. Just ones that jump to mind are property and equity, kind of go hand in hand in many senses. So yeah. 

Jennifer McBride 

The FE1s can seem quite overwhelming at first. So how did you kind of break down your FE1 journey and how you would tackle them? 

Anna O’Doherty 

Yeah, so it was actually during my internship, I was speaking to one of the partners here, and I’d explained that I’d love to travel and live abroad for a little while before starting my traineeship, and she said it was a good idea to do that in advance of the traineeship beginning. So, I decided I was going to try to balance travel and living abroad and working full-time with doing the FE1s, so I could kind of do everything at once. So, I would 100% recommend if you don’t have a time limit and if you want to kind of prioritise other things at the same time to spread out the sittings. So, I personally would recommend kind of three, three, and two. Now, I know a few people who did them in two sittings. I have heard of a few cases of people doing them in one. So, obviously, it depends on your own time limitit, but I would definitely say don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. As well as that, I feel like there’s a lot of kind of nervous chatter about FE1s, and they’re really built up all the way through college, 

Liam Cleary 

after graduation, I think people really build them up into something kind of scary, and they don’t need to be. The study is hard, there’s a lot to learn, but it doesn’t need to be stressful. I think if you kind of plan properly and spread them out, make sure you’re kind of giving yourself enough time to like focus on each individual exam, then the exams themselves are doable, albeit the study time is tough. But the more you study, the luckier you get. So I think it’s quite a different approach to college. It’s very much like study shallow and broad rather than really get in-depth into certain areas. So that would be kind of my overview of the approach I took anyway. 

Jennifer McBride 

That’s great, thank you. And were there any particular, like, study techniques or resources or anything that you used and found helpful? 

Anna O’Doherty 

I know some people would recommend the revision courses, generally because there’s so much, it’s kind of a voluminous amount that you need to look over and to review, and then obviously learn off eventually. I took the approach that I would kind of try to understand every topic first, so just review all of the revision material I would have, go through it, and then put it aside and strip it down to the bare bones of the parts I needed to learn off. So I literally, would prepare like night before exam notes, which I think were really helpful. So you do your basic review and understanding, then I would do my notes, which would be case names and maybe two or three lines per case. Same with legislation, section, subsection, two or three lines on that, and then cut that down even further to just before the exam, because sometimes the timetable is laid out where you could have one exam one day, and then you have to switch your brain into gear for a different exam the next day. So, I would 100% recommend with each step, cutting it down, cutting it down, until the night before. You just have case name, one or two words that will trigger your memory for the rest of it, and that just gets your brain into gear for the next exam. 

Jennifer McBride 

And what was your approach to the exam day itself? Would you have any kind of practical tips for exam nerves? 

Liam Cleary 

Yeah, sleep is important. Yeah. I know as tough as it sounds like you’ll want to try to get as much information into your brain as soon as possible before the exam, but a good night’s sleep makes such a difference to how you perform on the day. As well, just take a breath before that exam starts because a lot of people are inclined to just rush in, write whatever you think, the first thing that comes to your head. But you need to give yourself those ten minutes at the start. Go through each question. And what I found helpful as well was anything that I pick out of a question, like if I realise what topic it was on, I’d be putting those cases down straight away. Just write them into the box. Because even if you don’t get back to that question, you don’t write anything else, if you have a couple of case names, you might get a few marks. That could be the difference between a pass and a fail. In relation to the exam itself, timing is so important, so, so important. And it was something that I definitely fell down on at the start. 

You need to be very, very strict with your timing, because you have to answer those five questions and you have that allotted amount of time. If you think you’re going to, you know, I just want to finish off this answer, I want to perfect this conclusion, that’s time you’re spending on one question that’s been taken away from another where you might be able to gain a lot more marks in that other question had you actually gone and attempted it. So I think timing is something very, very important. Also a snack. It’s a long exam. You need something to kind of keep your brain alive and healthy and a lot of water. But yeah, and then once the exam is done, forget about it because you can’t go back and change it once it’s submitted. Once you hit that button, it’s gone. 

Jennifer McBride 

So moving back to you Anna, you mentioned earlier that there’s a lot of hype around the FE1s when you’re in college, etc., and a lot of fear around it. What would you say are the kind of the biggest misconceptions about the FE1 and what was your experience? 

Anna O’Doherty 

I think one of the biggest misconceptions or maybe obstacles to the exam would be just nervousness. People are really worried about them. We were saying earlier that we were really nervous coming up to them. I don’t know anyone who’s doing them or has done them who isn’t scared in a way, and that can lead to people kind of postponing them or building them up so much in their heads that they kind of panic the day of. Realistically, when you’re doing the study, I think that’s the hardest bit. Like, that’s the kind of bit you have to really keep your head down and just get through it, and there is a lot. But the day of the exam, you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised if you have done that. The exams themselves are so much more doable than people make them out to be, and I think going in and being calm and, you know, steadying yourself makes a huge difference. I don’t think you’re ever going to feel as prepared as you would for a college exam, because it’s just a completely different setup. College exams, you need to really know a lot about reasoning. 

You need to kind of dive in much deeper than you would for FE1s. For FE1s, it’s more about getting that knowledge, over a lot of volume for each topic, whereas college, you can kind of think what’s going to come up on the exam, I’m really going to lean into this. FE1s seems like, oh my God, there’s so much that it’s impossible to get that level of depth on everything. So I would say you’d be surprised with how well you’ll do in the exam when you just cover a lot, but in much less detail, you don’t need to feel super ready, or that you can answer any kind of niche question that will come up on any given topic. Your study can be one of much more shallow. And yeah, the exams generally then are easier than you’d expect them to be. 

Jennifer McBride 

If you had just three pieces of advice to give to somebody who was setting out to sit the FE1s for the first time, what would that be? 

Anna O’Doherty 

My first piece of advice would definitely be to pace yourself. Give yourself enough time. Don’t feel like you need to do them all in one seat or two sittings. I would say as well, study strategically. You kind of have to work hard and smart, but the best of your ability, try to cut things down. As I was saying earlier, you don’t need a whole load of information about specific topics. You need to know a little about a lot. And then finally, I think the most important thing is just trust yourself. They’re going to be okay. It is really nerve-wracking. We’ve all done it and we’ve all been so nervous. If you think of a partner in a firm you’ve worked in, they had to do them, down to us little preseat trainees. We had to do them. You’ve done the hard work. The study is the hard bit. It’s tricky, but it doesn’t need to be stressful. Just trust yourself, take a deep breath on the day, and try to go into the exams as calmly as you can. 

Jennifer McBride 

Thank you Anna. That’s really helpful. And Liam, just to finish out with you, is there anything, any other advice that you would give? Anything else you’d like to add to what Anna said? 

Liam Cleary 

Yeah. I would probably say prioritise exam technique over exam material. That in the sense of focusing on the examiner reports, exam questions, studying smarter, I suppose, than harder, just gives you a better sense of how you’re going to approach the exam on the day. As well, don’t compare yourself. I found myself doing that a lot, comparing myself to other people who may have more FE1s done than me or doing more in a particular sitting. But everyone takes their own time and their own journey getting them done. And look, as Anna said as well, everyone gets through them in the end, everyone completes them in the end. So there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t forget that. 

Jennifer McBride 

Thank you both so much for sharing your insights and advice today. I think that will be really helpful for people looking ahead to this FE1 journey. We hope you found today’s conversation useful. And good luck to anyone who is looking at sitting their FE1s. If you would like more information on our trainee programme here at Arthur Cox or any of our early careers, please visit the Arthur Cox website.