The last sitting of the 2027 Examinations is Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics, with Practical Exercises — 25% of the weighted general average, on the afternoon of 12 September 2027. The words "with practical exercises" are doing real work in that sentence, and most candidates prepare for them by accident.
This article is about what a practical exercise is, how it differs from a doctrinal question, and how to prepare for four formats that recur.
What "practical exercises" signals
A doctrinal question asks what the law is. A practical exercise asks you to do something a lawyer does: draft a short pleading, answer a client's question in a letter, frame a motion, decide what to file and when, or state what you would tell the client and why.
Three consequences for the answer:
- Form matters. If you are asked to draft, the result should read like a draft — a caption, a prayer, numbered allegations — not like an essay about a draft.
- Sequence matters. Many practical exercises are procedural: what you file, in which court, within which period, and what happens next. The order of the answer is part of its correctness.
- Judgement matters. Some exercises ask you to choose between remedies, or to advise between two courses. Naming a defensible course and justifying it scores; listing all the possibilities and choosing none does not.
The four formats that keep appearing
1. Draft something short
A motion for reconsideration, a notice of appeal, a complaint's prayer, an affidavit, a position paper's heading, a demand letter. Short means short: the examiner wants the skeleton and the operative language, not a formatted pleading of three pages.
How to answer: write the parts, in order, with real content — parties, the act complained of, the relief, the basis. If you cannot remember the rule's exact wording, state the substance and mark it as such ("the motion is based on the ground that…").
2. Advise a client
A short fact pattern and a question: "What will you advise? What are the risks? What should she do in the next ten days?"
How to answer: conclusion first ("She should file X within N days"), then the procedural or substantive basis, then the practical consequence of the alternative. A client-facing answer that reads like an essay about a doctrine is missing the exercise.
3. Choose and justify a remedy
Two or more remedies are available, each with a period, a court and a consequence. The exercise is the choice.
How to answer: name the chosen remedy, state why the alternatives are unavailable (period expired, wrong court, wrong party), then the steps and the deadline. The justification of the rejection is usually where the marks are, because it shows you know the boundaries of each remedy.
4. Ethics in a scenario
A lawyer or judge is on the wrong side of a rule — conflict of interest, an unverified allegation, a notarial act by someone disqualified, an advertisement that crosses a line. The question asks what rule is engaged, and what follows.
How to answer: name the specific provision of the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability (or the Notarial Rules, or the Rules of Court on disqualification), state the duty it creates, apply it to the facts, then state the consequence: discipline, nullity of the notarial act, inhibition, a return of fees.
Two habits matter more here than anywhere else: name the specific provision, and separate the disciplinary consequence from the practical one. An answer that says "the lawyer will be disciplined" and stops has answered half.
How practical exercises differ from doctrinal ones
| Doctrinal question | Practical exercise |
|---|---|
| "What is the period to appeal?" | "The judgment was received on 3 May. What will you file, where, and when?" |
| "What are the requisites of a valid notarial acknowledgment?" | "Which of these four documents may Atty. X notarise?" |
| "Distinguish X from Y." | "Your client can do X or Y. Which do you advise, and why?" |
| Rule displayed | Rule used |
The last row is the summary. A practical exercise is scored on use.
Preparing for it, in the review year
Practice the drafting. Once a week, in the last six months, draft one short document from memory: a notice of appeal, a motion to dismiss, the prayer of a complaint, an affidavit of service. Twenty minutes each. Keep them; the second draft of the same document two months later is a measurement.
Learn the procedural skeleton of your own subjects. You cannot advise on a remedy you cannot state in sequence. This is the same work as the Remedial Law outline — see the outline method — applied in order rather than by topic.
Practise stating a choice. Take two remedies that overlap and write four sentences choosing one. Repeat across the year. Under time, the choice is the hard part.
Read the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability as a list of duties, and for each duty write one fact pattern that would breach it. That is a bank of scenario answers.
Time allocation inside the sitting
Twenty problems in four hours, so twelve minutes each, whatever the format. Practical exercises tempt over-writing: a draft invites three pages, an advice invites a client letter of six paragraphs.
Three rules:
- Draft the parts, not the poetry. Caption, allegations, prayer. Nobody is marking your register.
- State the deadline. A procedural answer without a period is incomplete; a period is a fact the examiner can tick.
- Conclude with the next step. "The next step is X, within Y, in Z court" is a conclusion a marker can find.
The mistake that costs most
Answering a practical exercise as though it were a doctrinal one: a well-organised essay on the requisites of a valid appeal, when the question asked what you would file tomorrow.
The reverse also happens — treating a doctrinal question as a format exercise and drafting a pleading in answer to "what are the requisites". Both failures come from the same place: not deciding, in the first thirty seconds, what kind of question this is. That is the classification habit described in the question shapes, and this sitting is where it pays most.
Why this sitting deserves the early preparation
Two reasons. It is 25% of the result — the largest single share — and it is the sitting that combines two subjects, one of which (Ethics) is small enough to finish early. A candidate who has Ethics solid by January and practises procedural sequencing from April arrives at the last afternoon with the paper's biggest block already under control, at a point in the week when everyone else is tired.