Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is the 2nd and final exam under the QLTS assessments. You can appear for the OSCE only after passing the MCT. The OSCE originally introduced for the medical profession (Doctors, Nurses, Dentists etc) eventually found its way into law via the QLTS.

The QLTS exam structure (MCT + OSCE) has now paved way for the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE otherwise know as ‘super exams’) which will follow the same format as that of the MCT & OSCE (albeit minor changes- read details here).

OSCE is both tough and challenging. It tests a number of things (see my post on the structure of the OSCE) to name a few- legal knowledge, legal procedure, application of law & procedure to a case at hand, legal language and legal reasoning, clear and good writing skills etc.

Most importantly this is a test of your mental stamina.

These are my tips:

Law & Skills

Kaplan states that the OSCE tests law and skills on a 50:50 ratio.

The knowledge of law is penultimate to scoring high and passing the OSCE. You cannot write a well drafted, well structured, clear and precise letter but the legal advice to your client is legally incorrect. You may get graded well on the skills for this assessment, but receive nothing on law. If you took this approach across all assessments, you are highly likely to fail the OSCE.

Poor skills in the OSCE can also lead to a failure. The client interview is a good example to consider. If you are unable to gain relevant, important information from your client you have failed to show the necessary skills in this assessment.

Some of you may wonder which should I focus on more? My focus was split 75 : 25 – LAW: SKILLS respectively and here are my reasons-

(a) Most of the candidates who sit the QLTS are practising (or have practised) law in their respective country;

(b) The work experience in your (respective) country puts you in a better position to understand the skills required for the OSCE and you may only have to fine tune them to suit the Day 1 UK Solicitor requirement;

(c) More focus on skills and less on law or a split of 50:50 (law:skills) is not the right approach for the OSCE.

If you are preparing for the OSCE via a course provider they should tell you how to tweek your skills to the requirement of a Day 1 UK Solicitor. If they don’t, then make sure to ask them. And inspite of asking they do not assist or help – ask for a refund!

For those of you preparing on your own for the OSCE or keen to understand how to develop your skills, I highly recommend the OUP Book on Lawyer’s Skills.

The link to OUP website for this book is here. It is also available on Amazon India (seems like an older version though, 2017 print). It gives some great tips and certainly very UK focussed.

Scoring- Law & Skills

Assessment	Law	Skill
Client Interview	No	Yes
Attendance Notes	Yes	Yes
Advocacy/Oral presentation	Yes	Yes
Legal Research	Yes	Yes
Legal Drafting	Yes	Yes
Legal writing	Yes	Yes

The Client Interview is the only assessment which is marked purely on skills. The client interview and the attendance notes are linked to each other. However, you are scored on both law & skills for the attendance notes (do not get confused). Please look again at the above table to understand the marking criteria.

Kaplan also provides detailed explanation in their marking moderation policy- link here. If you have the time please read through this.

One may wonder, if I prepare well, I need not concern myself with the marking criteria. WRONG! Every exam requires a strategy and understanding with regards the marking criteria. The marking criteria also helps us understand what one must focus on. For example, in the client interview there is no marking for law and it is a purely skills focussed assessment. You should therefore focus on skills such as (taken from Kaplan’s marking and moderation policy)–

• listening and questioning
• language and explanation
• professional manner
• Client-focussed
• Builds trust and confidence

The client is an actor and therefore cannot mark you on your legal knowledge. Understanding the marking for this assessment can change your approach and preparation. In my opinion the client interview is also a really good assessment where you can gain a lot of marks for skills.

Revise law

Any exam preparation involves a good amount of revision. In the context of the OSCE, I will say, that revision is of great importance. The MCT tests your knowledge of law in a completely different way to the OSCE. See my post on tips to pass the MCT.

The OSCE tests many practical aspects which builds on the theory. Perhaps, you can see the logic of the QLTS exams- first you need to pass the MCT (theory based) to then pass the OSCE (practice based).

Most course providers will provide you with an outline of the subject and/or revision notes. Some people find this very helpful as they rely on it for purposes of revising. If you are like me, you prefer to write your own notes and draw tables and charts.

If you are not using a course provider, I highly recommend the LPC Answered- Core Modules. Apart from my own course provider’s revision notes, I used this book and was extremely happy. This book contained a lot of charts and tables which was what made it very interesting and reliable.

Another book recommended by some of my friends who have used it as a revision tool is the LPC Handbook. I haven’t used it myself, but the verdict is that you can either use the LPC Answered or the LPC Handbook.

How to practice skills?

The OSCE tests you on a number of skills. Revising law is straight forward in the sense that you don’t need anyone’s help to write your notes or charts etc or carry on with revision. Skills revision on certain aspects may require some help from friends or family members.

The client interview, oral presentation and Advocacy are three assessments which requires interaction with another person. The client interview assessment is a purely skills based assessment and how you deal with the client depends entirely on how the client is in the interview room. Is the client on edge and very nervous?- you would need to calm them down; is the client very silent or not very communicative- you would need to get the client to talk and get all the relevant information etc.

Many of you may not need to practice such scenarios given the daily dealings with a variety of clients. But, if you do not have client facing experience, it may be good to work with a study partner or seek the help of a friend or family. If it is hard to find someone that can help you practice then adopt the mantra- ‘be curious; the more curious you are the better the information gathering‘.

Oratory skills- Understand the difference in approach between arguing a case before a decision maker (addressing them correctly is also important) and presenting to a client. Use different vocabulary skills and body language depending on the assessment. You can practice both advocacy & oral presentation by yourself. The key is to have a structure, be clear, do not rush through, good eye contact, good time management and identifying the correct issues.

Indian lawyers take note – (I say this without offending anyone) We are culturally very expressive with our hands when we talk and this extends while we present arguements in court proceedings. Just for those 25 minutes make peace with yourself and control the hand gestures/movements. The decision maker/client may not understand and can come across as distractive. Use your left hand to hold the paper and the right hand to hold your pen. With your left hand move it on the point you are talking about or making submissions on and the right hand to tick that point when you are done. This way it would be impossible to lift either hand away from the paper. [Surely King Killer Chronicle Fans will see parallels of the Adem people and how they use hand gestures as a way of expression- going off topic a bit!!]

The legal drafting, legal research and legal writing rely on a number of skills. But the most important of them is all fast typing. You can certainly practice this while preparing for the exams. Fast typing can help immensely during the Part 2 assessments to ensure that you have answered all the parts of the question.

Other revision material & sources

The OSCE is not only a tough exam to prepare for but the curriculum is also significantly vast. When you start preparing it gets very confusing as to what chapters you study or what you could potentially drop.

There is no one source of material one can rely on for purposes of preparation. As much as I did use BARBRI course for the prep work there were other sources I used for purposes of studying and revision.

I studied full time for the OSCE. I was therefore able to go through many of the sources I have listed here below. I used and relied on these for purposes of studying, making my notes and repetitive revision.

1. LPC Answered book- I touched on this already while discussing revision on law.
2. CILEX Question Papers- It helped me immensely as there were legal issues that one might not consider while looking at a case in hand. The suggested answers are helpful to make you think of linked legal issues and therefore direct your thought process. Read my blog post on this topic.
3. OUP Online materials- There is a huge amount of online materials from the OUP website. I have provided links to all the 5 subjects and I did go through each and every chapter on these links. I printed off whatever I could and went through them and again this helped a lot with revision. Click on the subjects for the relevant links- Business Law, Civil Litigation, Criminal Litigation, Property Law and Foundations of LPC (covers Probate).
4. OUP Books- the forms/appendix & case scenarios at the end of OUP books is a very useful revision tool. As an example for the Criminal Litigation I referred to 2 different cases.  The first one was R v Lenny Wise (pages 497 onwards in OUP Books) and the second is R v Nicholas Jones (which discusses in detail the 4 types of bad character evidence form). I also watched the videos (see the OUP link for Criminal law to watch) as that helped a lot with the Advocacy assessment. For the Civil Litigation I read through the case of Andrew James Pike v Deep Builder. This is a personal injury case. The letters of advice drafted by both sides to their respective clients was a very good source. This case also has a Part 36 offer letter which was very helpful.
5. Tax- This is not something I have covered above but extremely important. For this I relied on my MCT notes + revision notes and built up on this with the CILEX papers which have some complex corporate and probate (IHT) tax questions.
6. Online legal research- I found this blogger who has also faced the OSCE. This blogger has a very well written post on online legal research which I found very useful. The blogger has a very good knowledge and great understanding of the research tools on Lexis + WestLaw. This a link to the post and the blog.
7. Another good source if your preference is look through colourful charts and tables to help with revision, may I recommend lawmindmaps. You would need the LPC packages (GDL package is suitable for MCT prep). I have not used this personally but I have seen the samples and it might be suitable for someone out there so thought it worth mentioning.

Course providers

This is the most asked question by many of you who write to me either on LinkedIn or in the comments section. So I thought it is best to talk about the elephant in the room!

I choose BARBRI for the OSCE prep course. Their prep course runs for appx 12-14 weeks and sits nicely in line with the OSCE. Some of the reasons why I decided to go with BARBRI-

• The cost of the course covered the OUP e-books + access to Westlaw + access to Lexis. [I could not cope with OUP 600 page e-book so I bought all the physical books which did not cost a lot. For me it was important to have the physical books to make notes in, highlight etc]
• A tutor will work with you on assignments;
• The quantity of practice questions and assignments is less but the quality is extremely high;
• BARBRI conducts mock exams couple of weeks prior to the actual OSCE exams. Doing the mocks can get you into the right frame of mind. The mock examiners also provide excellent feedback; if there was something you did terribly wrong, then you have the time to make those corrections and not repeat that mistake in the actual exam.

It is ultimately a personal choice as to which course provider one may decide to use. So choose wisely!

Failing the OSCE

The OSCE as I mentioned earlier is a tough exam. Preparing for this exam is no small feat. Six days of exams, three assessments each day and performing your best in each assessment- is a tough gig!

I passed the OSCE on my second attempt. I was in the unfortunate batch of May 2019 where the pass rates were extremely low in comparison to any other OSCE. In fact, if you did not get a place on the May 2019 consider yourself very lucky!

Pass mark Pass rate

The pass mark remained the same as with other years of the OSCE assessments but the pass rate dropped significantly. If everyone in the above assessments performed badly then the pass mark should have also reduced. But apparently it doesn’t. The OSCE results are tricky to understand.

One of the biggest learnings of failing the OSCE on the first attempt was to be able to pick up where I left off and getting back into the groove of revision this time with more determination than before.

It is never easy when you fail an exam especially if you have poured your heart and soul into preparing. It can be extremely soul crushing. But I am afraid I will be repeating myself again that “Failure is the stepping stone to success”.

Think about what more you can do in preparation for your next OSCE. Do more revisions, revise your course materials, read through the OUP books, practice the mocks again.

Look at failing the exam as an advantage. You now have first hand experience of the exam conditions and what is expected. You can say goodbye to all the nerves that walked with you on your first attempt. You understand the wait times, the jumping from one assessment to another, recalibrating your mind in prep for the next assessment, the short toilet breaks etc. This should help you to a great extent in your second attempt.

Funding the OSCE

The OSCE is expensive for those who are self funding. As in my MCT prep post here this is also an important aspect of writing exams- ‘money’!

Ensuring that you have enough funds (savings, credit cards, borrowing from family etc) to pay for the OSCE exam is important to bear in mind. I would also suggest that you put aside a second set of OSCE exam fees in the event you need it for the next attempt.

Accommodation- on days of exam

I live in a suburb outside London but I work in London. I know how long my commute takes into London and also how much of excess times I need to allow myself in case of any travel disruptions. None the less, during Part 1 exam day (my first attempt of the OSCE) some unforeseen travel issues occurred and it took me 3 extra hours to get back home. I did not have any material to revise for the next day’s exam and ended up revising the whole night!

On my second attempt I choose to stay at two different hotels:

(a) Part 1- The Wesley (81-103 Euston Street, Camden, London, NW1 2EZ, United Kingdom). It took me appx 7-8 mins walking from the hotel to the exam centre (Royal College of General Practitioners).

(b) Part 2- Doubletree by Hilton-Islington (60 Pentonville Road,, Islington, London, N1 9LA, United Kingdom). There are other Hotels closer to the Kaplan exam centre but I lived in this area (during my LLM days) and I know the bus routes quite well. It took me (walking + bus) around 20 mins from hotel to the exam centre (Kaplan, Spring House, 40-44 Holloway Road, N7 8JL).

Once again factor costs of accommodation and food expenses for the duration of the exams.

I wish all of you the best for the exams. Please leave your questions in the comments section as it will help other readers. 

Stay calm and smash the exam!!