Four hours, twenty problems: running a bar sitting

Twenty problems in four hours is twelve minutes a problem, and that is the entire arithmetic of a bar sitting. Everything else — how you read, how you plan, how you recover — exists to protect that rate.

This article is about the sitting as an event: the clock, the platform, the decisions in front of you, and the failures that cost whole questions rather than marks within questions.

Before the clock starts

The minutes before the paper appears are worth more than they look.

• Know the platform. The examination is administered on a secure electronic assessment platform, as it has been since 2020, with its own rules on what may be open, what autosaves, and how the text box behaves. Practise writing in a plain text box: no spellcheck that understands "ponencia", no formatting, no undo history you can rely on.
• Arrive with a plan for the body. Four hours at a keyboard without water, food or a break is an endurance problem. Decide in advance how you will sit, when you will drink, and how you will use any permitted break.
• Have your twelve-minute protocol memorised so that you are not inventing it under pressure — read, answer, rule, apply, conclude, check.

The first five minutes

When the paper opens, do not start writing question one.

1. Count the questions. Twenty, or however many the paper carries for that year. Note whether any are split into parts, because a two-part question is where the missing half happens.
2. Scan the headings. Two minutes of scanning tells you which questions are short and statutory and which are long and analytical. That information changes your order, and order is free marks.
3. Write your pace. If the sitting is four hours for twenty questions, write 12 in the corner of your scratch space. Every time you finish a question, you know where you stand.
4. Start with one you know cold. Not to warm up — to bank a clean answer while your attention is fullest, and to remind yourself the paper is answerable.

The order you answer in

There are two defensible orders.

Straight through (1, 2, 3…): predictable, no time lost to navigation, and it matches how you practised. Its weakness is that a hard question early can eat a second question's minutes.

Triage order (easy first, then the rest): you bank the marks you can definitely get, and you approach the difficult ones with the psychological advantage of having already written two good answers. Its weakness is that a misjudged "easy" question can leave you with the hardest problem and eight minutes left.

Most candidates are better served by straight through with a hard stop: at twelve minutes, move, regardless. A question left unfinished but answered in part scores; a question abandoned because the previous one absorbed its time scores nothing.

The hard stop, and what to do at it

Twelve minutes is not a target. It is a decision point: either you are writing the conclusion, or you leave.

When you leave a question unfinished:

• Never leave it blank. A one-line answer with a rule and conclusion is worth more than an empty box, and writing it takes ninety seconds.
• Mark it and move. Do not negotiate with the clock.
• Return only if you finish the paper early — and you probably will not. Assume the return never happens, and make the partial answer as good as possible now.

A blank answer is the most expensive thing in a bar sitting and the easiest mistake to avoid.

Reading the question properly

Under time pressure the eye skips. Four habits catch most misreads:

• Find the question mark. The facts are often three sentences and the question is the last line; write the question in your own words before answering it.
• Count the asks. "What is the crime, and may he be released?" is two questions. Underline each verb.
• Note who is asking. "Is X liable to Y" is not the same as "what is X's liability", and neither is the same as "what remedies are available to Y".
• Watch for the negative. "Is the contract void or merely voidable" and "may the buyer rescind, or must he sue for specific performance" are different questions with different answers, and the wrong one is fatal.

The last twenty minutes

The last quarter of an hour is not for new thinking. It is for four checks, in this order:

1. Empty boxes. Scroll the whole paper — the entire paper, not the last page — and confirm every question has something in it.
2. Unanswered sub-questions. Go back to your counted asks; every number should have a corresponding sentence.
3. Conclusion sentences. Each answer should end with one. If it does not, add it — one line, and the rubric's third question is answered.
4. Identifier sanity. If your answer names a person or an amount, check it is the right one. Crossed names are the most avoidable error in the whole paper.

Do not use the last twenty minutes to rewrite. Rewriting at speed produces worse prose, not better law.

When a question surprises you

It will: something not in the syllabus as you mapped it, or a doctrine you have seen once. Three responses, in order of quality:

• Answer from the rule you do know. Most surprising questions are a familiar doctrine applied to unfamiliar facts. Ask what the question is about — ownership, jurisdiction, liability — and answer from the general rule.
• Say what the test is and apply it. If you remember the test but not the case name, that is enough. Examiners mark doctrine, not case names.
• Answer something. A reasoned answer that reaches a defensible conclusion scores better than a paragraph explaining that you are not sure which rule applies.

Practise the sitting, not just the questions

Timed practice is the only way to learn the pace, and it must be the whole sitting: twenty questions, four hours, no pausing, no looking up, no phone. Two or three of these in the last three months, on the scheduled days of the week and at the scheduled times of day, will teach you more about the paper than a dozen untimed sets.

Then mark your own paper as an examiner would — against the rubric's three questions, not against your memory of what you meant to write. The gap between the two is the list of things to fix before the next sitting.

If nothing else, remember one sentence: a finished, structured, twelve-minute answer beats a brilliant fifteen-minute one that cost the next question its time. The paper does not reward depth. It rewards coverage.

For the answer structure those twelve minutes are spent on, see how a bar answer is scored; for what to practise with, see past bar questions.