Tips for PLTC

[sunshinecoast]

With PLTC starting in BC soon I thought I would write out a few of the tips that I found helpful. I only spoke to a few people before starting PLTC and there was so much I had no idea about until the course started. Hopefully, this is helpful.

• Sitting on zoom for 3-6 hours per day sucks. This took a toll on my mental health. Do whatever you need to stay healthy. I know it is obvious but do not give up on your health/fitness during this time.
• Do not fall behind the schedule. The first 2 weeks are relatively light. Use this time wisely. Once assignments and assessments start, the workload ramps up quickly.
• Participate and prepare for each class. Most of the material that you need to read for in-class activities you also need to read for your exams. I found that by the time exams rolled around I had already gone through most of the material by staying on top of the weekly schedule.
• ***BUT not all of the readings for the exams are assigned in the weekly schedule. This means you need to complete these readings on your own time.
• Brightspace is annoying to use. Play around with it and get used to finding the material you need. Sometimes material on brightspace is only available after a certain date/time. Make sure to note this so you can come back and download the material.
• WATCH ALL OF THE VIDEOS. The videos were by far the most useful material provided. Especially for the assessments.
• Treat your ungraded assignments like they are graded assessments. By learning and putting effort into the assignments, by the time the assessment comes around, most of the preparation is done!
• Make a group chat with your classmates. It was nice to have a place to ask my stupid questions and we would remind each other of deadlines etc.
• For assessments, FOLLOW THE MARKING GUIDE. Your instructor will give you feedback on your assignment so make sure to incorporate all of that feedback back into your assessment.
  • For those of you who have started articling or have done legal work before, it can be hard at first to kick habits. For example, your firm might have a certain way that they write contracts or conduct interviews. Essentially forget what you learned before (unless they happen to be the exact same way that PLTC wants you to do it) and follow the PLTC guides to a tee. This is not the time for creativity.
• Practice using all of your hardcopy materials, whether you decide to use indices or stick with the table of contents provided
  • On that note, DO THE PRACTICE EXAMS. They give you a good feel for what the exams will be like.
  • The exams are not like law school exams. For example, if a question asks you to provide two examples and you list three examples and one is incorrect then you will not get full marks for that question. Read what the question asks carefully
• The Law Society does a great job of providing students with materials on what to expect in the course. It is a lot of material to go through but read through it during those first two weeks and you will be set.

I have more tips but this is already pretty long... If anyone has questions I am happy to answer them and good luck to everyone starting PLTC!

[sven]

Thanks for the info! How did you find the indices for the materials? 

[Ramesses]

8 hours ago, sven said:

Thanks for the info! How did you find the indices for the materials? 

if you went to school in BC, ask your classmates or people a year ahead of you. if not, ask your PLTC classmates. you can always ask previously articling students at your firm. someone always have them and are willing to share. i recommend working in groups to review and update the indices and summaries/notes. try to use the most recent ones you can get your hands on since the material change slightly from term to term and even an extra paragraph can throw off the numbering for the indices. 

[Auntyline]

Thank you for posting this. I just finished week 2 and I am like on the brink of a breakdown (and things aren’t even hard yet), but I think I’m unnecessarily stressing myself out.

I’m almost up to date with readings (I had a really tough mental health day yesterday so didn’t do some of the readings for today), I’ve got good indices, trying my absolute hardest to stay on top of everything but I have it in my head that I’m going to fail no matter what. I have ADHD and anxiety (which I imagine is quite evident lol) and I tried to get accommodations but apparently they rarely accommodate people who have ADHD unless they can provide proof of the $1000+ assessment.
 

I’m also just annoyed with how hard and arbitrary things seem. And they say it’s in the public interest, but I’ve already done almost a full year of in-office articling and I’m confident in my work and abilities in the real world. I’m good at what I do, and I don’t want to do real estate law ever, so I don’t understand why that should have so much weight on whether or not I can practice 😭 

Anyways, thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far. Please let me know if you have any more tips 🙏🏼

[commdanrk]

Thank you so much for sharing this! I'll be doing the PLTC this Sep and there is so limited information available about this whole thing.
It makes me so nervous when I can't plan my life. I have a few questions hoping you could advise.
- for 6 hours zoom  days, is there any lunch break in between?

- How the assessments are done? Are the writing and drafting submitted digitally, and the interviewing and advocacy are held in-person?
- Are the exam dates included in the 10 weeks?

[VIPigeon]

3 hours ago, commdanrk said:

- for 6 hours zoom  days, is there any lunch break in between?

- How the assessments are done? Are the writing and drafting submitted digitally, and the interviewing and advocacy are held in-person?
- Are the exam dates included in the 10 weeks?

Not OP but currently in PLTC: 
 

- I haven’t had a class yet that has gone the full 5.5 hours. But it depends on your individual teacher how long your class runs each day. You definitely get breaks. 

- All assesments right now are done online, although I did see you could opt-in to doing the bar exams in person.

- The 10 weeks does include the exams! They are scheduled during week 10. 

 

[sunshinecoast]

On 5/31/2024 at 11:18 PM, Auntyline said:

Thank you for posting this. I just finished week 2 and I am like on the brink of a breakdown (and things aren’t even hard yet), but I think I’m unnecessarily stressing myself out.

I’m almost up to date with readings (I had a really tough mental health day yesterday so didn’t do some of the readings for today), I’ve got good indices, trying my absolute hardest to stay on top of everything but I have it in my head that I’m going to fail no matter what. I have ADHD and anxiety (which I imagine is quite evident lol) and I tried to get accommodations but apparently they rarely accommodate people who have ADHD unless they can provide proof of the $1000+ assessment.

I’m also just annoyed with how hard and arbitrary things seem. And they say it’s in the public interest, but I’ve already done almost a full year of in-office articling and I’m confident in my work and abilities in the real world. I’m good at what I do, and I don’t want to do real estate law ever, so I don’t understand why that should have so much weight on whether or not I can practice 😭 

Anyways, thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far. Please let me know if you have any more tips 🙏🏼

I was 100% unnecessarily stressed out in the first few weeks! They really do throw a lot of information at you all at once.

I also felt frustrated about covering areas of law I wasn't planning on practicing. I eventually realized I wasn't doing myself any good being so upset about it and just embraced it (easier said than done). At the very least if a client ever brings up an area of law I'm not familiar with I can recognize what they're asking for and can refer them to someone else.

If there's something specific you're struggling with I'm happy to help. I'm not on this site every day but I'll try and check!

[sunshinecoast]

5 hours ago, VIPigeon said:

Not OP but currently in PLTC: 
 

- I haven’t had a class yet that has gone the full 5.5 hours. But it depends on your individual teacher how long your class runs each day. You definitely get breaks. 

- All assesments right now are done online, although I did see you could opt-in to doing the bar exams in person.

- The 10 weeks does include the exams! They are scheduled during week 10. 

 

Yeah my days ranged from the full 5.5 hrs to as short as 1.5 hrs. Most days we ended around 12:00 pm. We had either a short 10-15 min break or we would get 30 mins for lunch on longer days. Most professors would let their students know what the week ahead looked like and would give them a heads up when it would be a full day

[chilly]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:18 AM, Auntyline said:

Thank you for posting this. I just finished week 2 and I am like on the brink of a breakdown (and things aren’t even hard yet), but I think I’m unnecessarily stressing myself out.

I’m almost up to date with readings (I had a really tough mental health day yesterday so didn’t do some of the readings for today), I’ve got good indices, trying my absolute hardest to stay on top of everything but I have it in my head that I’m going to fail no matter what. I have ADHD and anxiety (which I imagine is quite evident lol) and I tried to get accommodations but apparently they rarely accommodate people who have ADHD unless they can provide proof of the $1000+ assessment.
 

I’m also just annoyed with how hard and arbitrary things seem. And they say it’s in the public interest, but I’ve already done almost a full year of in-office articling and I’m confident in my work and abilities in the real world. I’m good at what I do, and I don’t want to do real estate law ever, so I don’t understand why that should have so much weight on whether or not I can practice 😭 

Anyways, thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far. Please let me know if you have any more tips 🙏🏼

FWIW I didn't always keep up with the schedule-- just made sure to read everything once and (more or less) digest it. I made use of the breaks and time after the course officially ended to get through everything. You'll be fine even if you can't read 1000 pages of real estate materials in a day according to the schedule. 🙂 

Tip: make sure you're well rested before the barrister and solicitor exam because those are a time crunch.

[Auntyline]

1 hour ago, chilly said:

FWIW I didn't always keep up with the schedule-- just made sure to read everything once and (more or less) digest it. I made use of the breaks and time after the course officially ended to get through everything. You'll be fine even if you can't read 1000 pages of real estate materials in a day according to the schedule. 🙂 

Tip: make sure you're well rested before the barrister and solicitor exam because those are a time crunch.

Thank you so much. Someone told me yesterday that “whatever you do, DO NOT get behind on readings” so I’ve been having a bit of a meltdown but everyone in my cohort is also behind and your comment is comforting lol

[sven]

Did anyone take courses in the tested subject areas? If so, did you find that it helped with your studying? 

[Ramesses]

On 6/5/2024 at 5:28 PM, Auntyline said:

Thank you so much. Someone told me yesterday that “whatever you do, DO NOT get behind on readings” so I’ve been having a bit of a meltdown but everyone in my cohort is also behind and your comment is comforting lol

Sorry late to the party. I did not finish all of the readings heading into exams. I would say I did about 2/3s of them. I focused first on my indexes and my summaries (which I got from my friends and classmates), second on the stuff I didn't learn in law school like RE and family, and then on stuff I did learn in school but was less familiar about like criminal. 

I articled for a few months before PLTC so I had a good grasp of corporate and commercial already but note that PLTC is more focussed on private companies and not public. So even thought my answer was right for public companies, it was wrong for private companies.

[swizzle_12]

Did you find the quizzes at the end of each practice material section to be similar to what the exam questions were like? 

[Psychometronic]

32 minutes ago, swizzle_12 said:

Did you find the quizzes at the end of each practice material section to be similar to what the exam questions were like? 

Not the quizzes but the practice exam questions were fairly similar to the bar exam questions. 

[countryside]

I have completed 5 weeks. I could not get summaries from anyone. Has anyone else not relied on the summaries?