Login

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

March 28, 2024, 09:05:43 pm

Author Topic: Advice needed: going to pick up legal 3&4 next year, but haven't done units 1&2!  (Read 2628 times)  Share 

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

cndyphan

  • Fresh Poster
  • *
  • Posts: 4
  • Respect: 0
I'm a year 11 student at the moment, and I'm hoping to study Comm/Law at Monash - the only prerequisites are Methods and English, both of which I'm already doing, but I really want to do legal so that I at least have some sort of foundation established before jumping into Comm/Law. So the subjects I'm doing at the moment are:
- English 1&2
- Spesh 1&2
- Italian 1&2
- Bio 3&4
- Methods 3&4
- BusMan 1&2
I'm getting pretty good grades for BusMan, especially since it's a super easy subject, but the content is just so dry and I don't have any motivation to study for the subject, so I want to drop it for legal next year. I chose legal initially, but due to subject clashes, I had to choose between legal and spesh, and I went with spesh for the scaling since Comm/Law requires a pretty high ATAR (98 clearly in). I did legal in year 10 and did quite well actually, top grades in the class - it was my absolute favourite subject so was pretty bummed to not do it this year. I did work experience at the Supreme Court and I loved it - pretty much finalised my decision to study law in uni. I spoke with my teacher a few days ago and she says she definitely reckons I can cope in legal 3&4 if I put in the extra effort to go over units 1&2.

So my question is: do any of you know people who skipped units 1&2 but still did well in year 12? How do I catch up to the other kids who actually did units 1&2? I'm considering purchasing the textbook to study, but idk? Next year, I'd have finished bio and methods so I can concentrate fully on my other 4 subjects, so I definitely will have the capacity to put in extra effort for legal.

MissSmiley

  • Forum Obsessive
  • ***
  • Posts: 349
  • Respect: +84
I'm a year 11 student at the moment, and I'm hoping to study Comm/Law at Monash - the only prerequisites are Methods and English, both of which I'm already doing, but I really want to do legal so that I at least have some sort of foundation established before jumping into Comm/Law. So the subjects I'm doing at the moment are:
- English 1&2
- Spesh 1&2
- Italian 1&2
- Bio 3&4
- Methods 3&4
- BusMan 1&2
I'm getting pretty good grades for BusMan, especially since it's a super easy subject, but the content is just so dry and I don't have any motivation to study for the subject, so I want to drop it for legal next year. I chose legal initially, but due to subject clashes, I had to choose between legal and spesh, and I went with spesh for the scaling since Comm/Law requires a pretty high ATAR (98 clearly in). I did legal in year 10 and did quite well actually, top grades in the class - it was my absolute favourite subject so was pretty bummed to not do it this year. I did work experience at the Supreme Court and I loved it - pretty much finalised my decision to study law in uni. I spoke with my teacher a few days ago and she says she definitely reckons I can cope in legal 3&4 if I put in the extra effort to go over units 1&2.

So my question is: do any of you know people who skipped units 1&2 but still did well in year 12? How do I catch up to the other kids who actually did units 1&2? I'm considering purchasing the textbook to study, but idk? Next year, I'd have finished bio and methods so I can concentrate fully on my other 4 subjects, so I definitely will have the capacity to put in extra effort for legal.
Hello and welcome to AtarNotes! :)
Good job with your BusMan performance and your interest in Legal!
Actually I would have thought that you'd take Legal instead of BusMan 1/2 !
Because for the Comm/Law degree, I know so many people who never did accounting, busman or economics (you know the subjects you commonly associate with commerce), and they're doing absolutely fine!
In fact, I know a girl and now she works at Allens!! - top commercial law firm!
So I would've prioritised doing legal over busman!

But anyway, I guess that was your choice, can't really do much about it now! And don't worry, I'm not trying to make you regret it!

But yeah, I do think you can do well in Legal even if you haven't done 1/2. Obviously you'd know that the study design's changed, and now a major part of Legal is the 'principles of justice' with a few minor changes to the Parliament and Law-making AOS. There's the 'synthesis' that's a new skill.
So I guess Year 12s this year were new to all this as well, except those of us that did 1/2 were already familiar with criminal, civil and Parliament and what-not.

But in year 12 teachers go through the basics of criminal and civil law and the Parliament anyway, so you won't be totally new to it! There's just a whole heap of extra content that gets added to the concepts that you've already learnt in Year 10, 1/2, etc.

One way it's good that you're doing BusMan 1/2 this year, because they have a very strong focus on how to answer questions, so you'll find that you answer questions really well in Legal next year, should you consider to do it!

If you're super super enthusiastic about it / if you think you can take out some spare time from doing Bio, Methods, and your Year 11 subjects, then you can consider buying the textbook that Year 12s at your school are currently using for Legal (either Oxford or Cambridge)
Otherwise, there's always the summer holidays at the end of Year 11 where you have LOTS of time to read and do something enjoyable like reading the Legal textbook !  ;)

You'll be fine! (considering your teacher's confident about it as well !)

Great to see your eagerness and your past experiences in law though! :)

2017 : Further Maths [38]
2018 : English [45] ;English Language [43] ; Food Studies [47] ;French [33] ;Legal Studies [39]
VCE ATAR : 98.10
2019 - 2023 : Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts at Monash University

I'm selling a huge electronic copy of  VCE English essays and resources document (with essays that have teacher feedback and marks) for $10. Feel free to PM me for details!

cndyphan

  • Fresh Poster
  • *
  • Posts: 4
  • Respect: 0
Hello and welcome to AtarNotes! :)
Good job with your BusMan performance and your interest in Legal!
Actually I would have thought that you'd take Legal instead of BusMan 1/2 !
Because for the Comm/Law degree, I know so many people who never did accounting, busman or economics (you know the subjects you commonly associate with commerce), and they're doing absolutely fine!
In fact, I know a girl and now she works at Allens!! - top commercial law firm!
So I would've prioritised doing legal over busman!

But anyway, I guess that was your choice, can't really do much about it now! And don't worry, I'm not trying to make you regret it!

But yeah, I do think you can do well in Legal even if you haven't done 1/2. Obviously you'd know that the study design's changed, and now a major part of Legal is the 'principles of justice' with a few minor changes to the Parliament and Law-making AOS. There's the 'synthesis' that's a new skill.
So I guess Year 12s this year were new to all this as well, except those of us that did 1/2 were already familiar with criminal, civil and Parliament and what-not.

But in year 12 teachers go through the basics of criminal and civil law and the Parliament anyway, so you won't be totally new to it! There's just a whole heap of extra content that gets added to the concepts that you've already learnt in Year 10, 1/2, etc.

One way it's good that you're doing BusMan 1/2 this year, because they have a very strong focus on how to answer questions, so you'll find that you answer questions really well in Legal next year, should you consider to do it!

If you're super super enthusiastic about it / if you think you can take out some spare time from doing Bio, Methods, and your Year 11 subjects, then you can consider buying the textbook that Year 12s at your school are currently using for Legal (either Oxford or Cambridge)
Otherwise, there's always the summer holidays at the end of Year 11 where you have LOTS of time to read and do something enjoyable like reading the Legal textbook !  ;)

You'll be fine! (considering your teacher's confident about it as well !)

Great to see your eagerness and your past experiences in law though! :)

Thank you so much for that! Reading your comment definitely put my mind at rest. I guess next up on my reading list is the legal textbook!  ;D

abbeyrose

  • Forum Regular
  • **
  • Posts: 59
  • Respect: +27
It is definitely possible. I picked up legal 3/4 without 1/2 and managed to be dux of my class and never dropped below the 90%s on my SACs (granted, I studied during the previous study design and thus I cannot speak on how the new study design would be). The only thing I found difficult initially, that perhaps I wouldn't have found if I had done 1/2, was learning how to answer the questions the right way. However, once I understood what the task words were requiring me to do, it wasn't much of an issue after a bit of practise. I never bothered with studying from the Year 11 textbook, I would just be aware of areas that overlapped with knowledge learnt in 1/2 and study accordingly.

If your teacher is confident and legal is a subject that interests you, then I think you'll be just fine. Best of luck!  :)
« Last Edit: July 05, 2018, 12:06:03 pm by abbeyrose »
2016-2017 (VCE): English, Legal Studies, Further Maths, HHD, Psychology, History: Global Empires
2019-: Monash University

Sine

  • Werewolf
  • National Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *****
  • Posts: 5135
  • Respect: +2103
To add to those above. Legal is definitely a subject you can do very well in without doing 1/2. I have a few friends who dropped spesh for legal in year 12 and ended up with 40+ raw scores.

secretweapon

  • Trendsetter
  • **
  • Posts: 156
  • Respect: +2
To add to those above. Legal is definitely a subject you can do very well in without doing 1/2. I have a few friends who dropped spesh for legal in year 12 and ended up with 40+ raw scores.
But wouldn't you still have to revise some of the 1/2 knowledge before starting 3/4?