The morning of Wednesday, 8 September 2027 is Civil Law and Land Titles and Deeds: 20% of the weighted general average, in one sitting, on the second day. It is the largest single block of substantive doctrine in the whole examination, and it is the subject where candidates most often discover in August that they have read everything and organised nothing.
This article is the map, and the split.
The blocks, in syllabus order
| Block | What it contains | Weight in practice |
|---|---|---|
| I. Effect and application of laws | When laws take effect; ignorance; retroactivity; mandatory and prohibitory laws; waiver; repeal and the operative fact doctrine; judicial decisions; legal periods; territoriality of penal laws; conflict of laws | Small, but the source of precise questions |
| II. Persons | Juridical capacity and capacity to act; marriage; family relations | Moderate; family relations is examinable and frequently asked |
| III. Civil registry | Required entries; cancellation and correction | Small and procedural |
| V. Property, ownership and its modifications | Classification; ownership; accession; quieting of title; co-ownership; possession; actions to recover; usufruct; easements; nuisance; modes of acquiring ownership | Large |
| VI. Land titles and deeds | Regalian doctrine; nationality restrictions; the Torrens system; original registration; judicial confirmation of imperfect title; certificates of title; subsequent registration; non-registrable properties; dealings with unregistered land; the assurance fund; reconstitution | Small to moderate, but it is in the paper's title and it is examinable |
| VII. Succession | General provisions; testamentary; intestate; provisions common to both | Large, and the most computational — in the sense of shares, not arithmetic |
| VIII. Obligations and contracts | Obligations; contracts | The largest block, and the one that recurs in other subjects |
| IX. Special contracts | Sales; lease; agency; credit transactions | Large |
| X–XI. Quasi-contracts; torts and quasi-delicts | Definition and kinds; principles; classification; the tortfeasor | Moderate, and highly examinable in short questions |
Notice what the table implies: obligations and contracts, property, succession and the special contracts are where the sitting is won. Land Titles is a genuine part of the paper, but it is not a fifth subject sitting beside them.
Where the hours go
For 180 hours: roughly
| Block | Hours |
|---|---|
| Obligations and contracts | 45 |
| Property, ownership and its modifications | 30 |
| Succession | 30 |
| Special contracts (sales, lease, agency, credit) | 35 |
| Persons and family relations | 20 |
| Land titles | 12 |
| Effect and application of laws; quasi-contracts; torts | 8 |
And one instruction that overrides the table: do not save obligations and contracts for later because you "did" them in law school. They are the connective tissue of the whole sitting — a question about a sale is a question about obligations, and a question about a mortgage is a question about contracts and property at once.
The order to study in, and why
The syllabus order is defensible for a first pass, with one change: read effect and application of laws first, because it supplies vocabulary used everywhere else (when a law takes effect, retroactivity, the operative fact doctrine, legal periods). It is short and it prevents confusion for nine months.
Then:
- Persons — capacity is a precondition to the validity analysis in contracts and succession.
- Property — ownership is the baseline for land titles and for possession.
- Obligations and contracts.
- Special contracts — they apply obligations and contracts to named relationships.
- Succession — it applies property and obligations to a transfer on death.
- Land titles — it applies property to registered land.
- Quasi-contracts and torts — the residual sources of obligation.
That order also matches how questions are constructed: a fact pattern about a sale is a contracts question with a property tail.
Succession: the block that needs a technique
Succession is the block where reading is least efficient, because the examinable content is largely relationships and shares: who inherits, in what order, and how much.
Two techniques help:
- Draw the family tree. Every succession problem should begin with a diagram: names, relationships, legitimacy, whether a spouse survives, whether anyone predeceased, whether anyone is disinherited. Drawn correctly, half the question is answered.
- Work from the legitime. The compulsory heirs and their legitimes determine what may be given by will; the free portion follows. Questions about the validity of a testamentary disposition are usually questions about the legitime.
And one practice note: the Bulletin says computations involve only basic arithmetic. That is a promise about the arithmetic, not about the reasoning — the shares still have to be worked out, but the multiplication is simple.
Land titles: the block with the clearest structure
Land Titles is examinable and small enough to finish. Its spine is:
- The Regalian doctrine and the constitutional restriction on alien ownership of land — which links to the Political law block.
- The Torrens system and what a certificate of title means.
- Original registration and judicial confirmation of imperfect title — the latter with its own statutory conditions in the Public Land Act sense.
- Subsequent registration: voluntary dealings, involuntary dealings, and annotations.
- Dealings with unregistered land, and the assurance fund.
- Reconstitution of title.
Learn it with the certificate of title as the centre: every doctrine in the block is about what goes onto it, what it means, and what happens when it is wrong.
Practice that transfers
Three drills, in order of value:
- The distinction tables. Civil law is a subject of pairs — void and voidable, rescissible and unenforceable; a natural and a civil obligation; a real and a personal right; a testate and an intestate share. Write the table, with the consequence column filled. See obligations and contracts distinctions.
- The family-tree drills. Take ten succession problems from past papers and draw the tree for each, then state who inherits and in what proportion, without writing the essay. Twenty minutes for ten.
- Twelve-minute answers on the two shapes that dominate: "what is the status of the contract" and "who is liable to whom for how much".
The connection to the other sittings
Civil law is not sealed off. The same doctrines reappear as follows:
- Obligations and damages underpin the civil liability questions in Criminal Law.
- Property and ownership underpin some Remedial Law questions about actions to recover.
- Contractual relationships appear in Commercial law questions about insurance and sales of goods.
Which is why the examination's habit of asking a fact pattern rather than a topic favours candidates who studied Civil Law as a system rather than as chapters.
For the pairs that carry the marks, see obligations and contracts distinctions; for the property-and-registration half, land titles in one sitting.