Every candidate is told the weights. Very few let them change anything.
The 2027 Examinations award a weighted general average across six sittings: 25% for Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics, 20% each for Civil Law and Land Titles and for Commercial and Taxation Laws, 15% for Political and Public International Law, and 10% each for Labor and Criminal Law. A pass is 75% of that weighted average.
That is not trivia. It is a set of instructions about where to spend hours, where to accept risk, and where to spend your scarce recovery time.
What the arithmetic says
Four consequences, in descending order of importance.
1. The last afternoon is the paper
Twenty-five per cent of the result is one sitting, on the third day, when everyone is tired. Two things follow:
- Prepare it first, not last. Remedial Law should be the subject you began with and the one you enter September having rebuilt most often. The twelve-month plan puts it in the first two months for exactly this reason.
- Protect the run-up to it. The gap between 8 and 12 September is three days to hold two subjects; the heavier of the two deserves the larger share. See the pre-week.
2. The two ten-per-cent sittings cannot carry a weak quarter
A candidate who is excellent in Labor and Criminal and mediocre in Remedial has strengthened the smaller half of their own result. Two perfect scores in the 10% sittings add 20 percentage points to the weighted total; moving Remedial from mediocre to good can add more.
The implication is uncomfortable and worth stating plainly: do not allocate hours by affection or by comfort. Criminal Law is the subject most candidates enjoy. It is worth a tenth.
3. Depth beats breadth at the margin
Because each problem is worth 5% of its subject, no single question can rescue or destroy a paper — but a subject's total is a sum of small, equal units. That favours a candidate who can produce a competent answer to every question in the heavy sittings over one who produces three brilliant answers and leaves three boxes empty.
In practice: in Remedial and Civil, practise finishing all twenty. In Criminal and Labor, practise finishing all twenty faster, because you have fewer hours to invest and the paper is the same length. See four hours, twenty problems.
4. Risk is asymmetric
A weak 10% subject that falls apart costs you 10 points of weighted average — recoverable. A weak 25% subject that falls apart costs 25 — much harder to recover, and the last sitting is when candidates are least able to lift it.
So the risk rule: accept coverage risk in the small sittings, never in the last one.
Where to accept risk, deliberately
Triage is not a failure; it is arithmetic. A defensible order for reducing coverage when hours run short:
- Detail in Labor and Criminal that the syllabus does not name.
- Branches of Political and Public International Law that you cannot place on a map — especially the public international law component, which many candidates neglect and which carries part of 15%.
- The least examinable quarter of Commercial and Taxation, if you must — but carefully: that sitting is 20%, and it is paired with a subject many candidates find hardest.
And what must not be reduced: the daily retrieval, one timed answer a week, and the Remedial/Ethics rebuild.
The strategy inside a single sitting
Weights are across subjects, but they shape the twelve minutes too.
- Bank the cheap questions first. In every paper, three or four questions are short and factual: a definition, a requisites list, a period. Answer those first in a heavy sitting and you have secured a fifth of the subject in thirty minutes.
- Do not spend Remedial time like Criminal time. In a 10% subject, a question that resists four minutes gets the four-line answer and the next question. In the 25% subject, one extra minute on a hard question may be worth it — but only if you have already banked the rest.
- Never carry a grudge across questions. The weights make each question small; the temptation to perfect one is what makes candidates lose three.
What this does not mean
Three misreadings to avoid:
- It is not a licence to neglect the small subjects. Ten per cent is still a tenth, and Labor and Criminal are the two most finite bodies of law on the syllabus — the Code and the Labor Code. Cheap marks live there.
- It is not a prediction of the questions. The weights describe the paper's structure, not its content. See the 2027 Examinations.
- It is not a substitute for a pass in every subject. The result is a weighted average, and there is no honest way to compute your way to 75% while abandoning a sitting — you would need the 25% sitting to score implausibly.
A one-page allocation you can actually run
If you have 900 hours of review after the inevitable losses, the weights give you this, with the adjustments that most candidates need:
| Sitting | Weight | Baseline hours | Adjustment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remedial Law and Ethics | 25% | 225 | +25 if it is your weakest, front-loaded to the first two months |
| Civil Law and Land Titles | 20% | 180 | Land Titles is small — treat it as part of property, not a new subject |
| Commercial and Taxation | 20% | 180 | Do not let taxation's arithmetic look deter you; it is examined as doctrine |
| Political and Public International Law | 15% | 135 | Reserve a real block for public international law |
| Labor Law | 10% | 90 | Finite: the Labor Code and the dismissal jurisprudence |
| Criminal Law | 10% | 90 | Finite: two books of the Code plus the named special laws |
Adjust the shares for what you already know, but move hours only in the direction the weights allow: out of a subject you have proved you know, into one the weights say matters.
The sentence to keep
The paper is not six equal subjects. It is one 25% afternoon, two 20% mornings and afternoons, a 15%, and two 10%s — and the calendar of your year should look like that.
For where those hours go month by month, see the twelve-month plan; for how to know whether the allocation is working, see how to measure readiness.