BLAW20001: Corporate Law

Tutorial participation 10%, assignment 15%, exam 75%

Corp law was a pretty interesting subject. Coming into it, I pretty much had no idea what to expect. Blaw really doesn’t provide a foundation of law and the tutors in corp law acknowledged that and pretty much introduced the subject as if it was most students first law subject. A very very high percentage of students doing corp law are obviously commerce students, as the accounting breadth track requires corp law. So in tutes be prepared to deal with a lot of silence from everyone. Anyway I’ll break up my review into lectures, tutorials, assignments, and exam.

So Helen is the lecturer and honestly she’s pretty good. She does quite well for such a dry subject and uses a really good wide range of analogies to help students understand weird concepts and why they are in the legislation. The lectures themselves consist of key points that Helen talks about and provides a greater understanding. For example the lecture might say “Section 198A”, and Helen will then go into the detail about that section and why it’s important. So it’s pretty useful to go to lectures, and not just read slides. I highly recommend writing notes during lectures as these generally are the main points that are examinable. In addition, a lot of the content is found in the textbook. So it’s pretty helpful to either use the textbook readings to reinforce the lecture knowledge, or vice versa. I highly recommend though going through the textbook readings even if they’re a bit time consuming, I found they really help (and especially for getting good marks on the first assignment). Anyway overall the lectures are pretty good, they have the usual 10minute break in the middle as it’s a 2 hour lecture so people often go ask Helen questions or grab a coffee.

Coming into tutorials I was pretty lost. The questions are hard – they usually are past exam questions that have been changed a tiny bit. So don’t been demotivated or anything, just give it shot. The first thing to note is that for every tutorial there is a few set law questions (cases) that require you to provide/structure a response. However require is loosely termed because the tutors do not check your work. Tutorial participation is based solely off of participation in class like raising your hand and answering questions. Therefore while it may not be necessary to do the physical writing, it probably will help you get the tutorial participation marks cause you know your stuff and can answer tutor’s questions. As I said before, this subject is heavily dominated by accounting majors, so I heard that tutorials were often met with dead silence. In that case, it’s pretty easy to get tutorial participation but don’t assume you can just pick it up in week 9-10 and get full marks. Make sure you at least put a little effort to contribute in the early weeks ☺ Tutorials themselves are pretty good. The answers to questions are never posted on LMS or anything, so it’s up to you to take notes that you can reflect on in swotvac for the exam. I had David ‘the babovinator’ Babovic as my tutor and he was pretty damn good. He definitely knew his material and would cite legislation off the top of his head, which stunned the majority of the class. I would definitely recommend him as a tutor, one of the best tutors I’ve had and he generally marks your assignment in a good way and isn’t too harsh. Top bloke is all I have to say about him.

Assignments: So the assignment is a no more than 1500 word response to a proposed case, worth 15% (? Iirc) and due somewhere around week 4-5. As it’s due so early in the semester, it’s pretty easy to gauge what key points are in it as there isn’t really that much content. This is where I would definitely suggest reading the textbook because the textbook kind of links sections together where otherwise you would have had no idea. Helen is also pretty useful as she told us a few things would be present on the assignment in the lectures. Getting good marks on the assignment is a lot about just mentioning the particulars so be pretty exact in what you’re saying.

Exam was pretty well done. It’s an open book exam so you can take in whatever you want. I had a 30page binded book I made full of notes and a table of contents. It was super helpful, much more than the textbook itself could be. As Helen says, “the questions change but the answers pretty much stay the same”. We were provided with 2 recent past exams, and plenty more are available on the unimelb library site so there should be no shortage of exam questions. In addition, a lot of the past exam questions become tutorial questions so if you took notes through those tutes then you’re sitting pretty. During SWOTVAC, there was exam consultation sessions and revision lectures. The revision lectures were just a tutor in a lecture theatre who would answer questions by students so you can’t just rely to go to one of these to revise the whole course. I would suggest going to these even if you don’t have any questions (but make sure you have already done some revision otherwise it will go over your head). Helen answered a past exam question about a day before the actual exam and touched on something I would have never thought of and luck has it something similar appeared on the actual exam. The exam itself was alright…I don’t know lol, I haven’t got my mark back but I felt it went okay.

Anyway that’s it. Corp law was a good subject and I definitely enjoyed it – it is more difficult than blaw that’s for sure but it’s also more interesting. If you can, stay up to date with content because I don’t know how easy it would be to cram this subject.

Yep

Helen Anderson

We were given 2, but many more can be found on unimelb library site.

4.5 Out of 5

Hanrahan, Ramsay, and Stapledon, Commercial Applications of Company Law (CCH, latest edition). I definitely recommend it, pretty helpful.

(specify how many lectures, pracs, tutes ect. and their duration)

2016 Semester 1

TBA

25% Assignment, 75% Exams

All lecture notes are uploaded before the start of the semester; print them out and bind them like a book! Really convenient

Overall, this subject has been handled really, really well. Helen is, by far, one of the most organised subject coordinators in Melbourne Uni (at least in my opinion). Plus, she really really teaches well. The tutors for the subject are very well coordinated. So far, this has been one of my best subject experiences.

In terms of lectures, as said, one 2 hour lectures per week. Some lectures are more dense than the others, but all in all, Helen pretty much provides all necessary information we need to learn about the topic. She even gives glimpses of the Corporations Act 2001 on austlii every now and then. She's quite annoyed by little chatter so expect some "quiet there lady at the middle" statements from time to time. Content-wise, kinda dry...especially when it comes to directors' duties, share capital maintenance, and corporate contratcs. But it is to be expected given that it is a business law subject.

Compared to Tax Law (which I have done before doing Corp Law), I found Corp Law much harder to get around with because there are huge chunks of topics that are always bunched together, and when it comes to legal questions, it's much trickier to answer Corp Law questions than Tax Law ones. But I digress. All in all, despite the dryness of the content, the lectures are not boring. Helen gives discussions on interesting case laws and provides situational examples to complicated topics that are really helpful in learning the content, so make sure to do the pre-lecture reading (makes life much easier) and attend all lectures (listening to audio recordings just won't do). Note that there are only 10 weeks of actual content; Week 8 lecture serves as a mid-semester revision lecture (a.k.a. wake-up call for those still 'asleep', and Week 12 lecture serves as the revision lecture.

In tutorials, you talk about approaches on how to deal with legal cases. Some people who do Corp Law have no experience whatsoever in writing for legal cases (because PBL doesn't teach students to do that....) so there's gonna be an introduction to IRAC and legal writing which definitely helps. There are also helpful information about "Legal Writing for Non-Law Students" in the reading guide. The good thing about tutorials is that tutors aim to try to make things easier to understand (as I said, Corp Law questions are quite tricky) by drawing diagrams of corporate relationships, who's a director and who's the outsider, etc. Attend all tutorials and answer pre-tute work so (1) you don't get lost and you at least know what the tutor's talking about, and (2) you get a feel of the type of legal questions are gonna be asked in the assignment and the exam.

In prior years I believe the assignment was optional and only weighed 15% (that means if you opt to NOT to the assignment, the exam becomes 100% of your final grade). Now, they made sure everyone does the assignment and increased the weighting to 25% of the final grade. The assignment is relatively easy. The scope is from the first four weeks of lecture, and maximum word count is strictly 1,200. In our case there were three questions, and it not only tests you of the substance, but also of the form of your answer. It shouldn't strictly follow IRAC (I don't usually follow the IRAC) but it should at least neatly present the issue, identify applicable statutory and case laws, apply it to the case facts, and present a conclusion. Some people find it difficult to obtain good marks for this assignment because they fail to identify the issue correctly.

The exam is open book. It's a 2-hour exam with 30 minutes reading time (previously 3 hours) with just three questions (2 medium-sized cases and 1 long case). Pretty easy and very doable if you've exerted lots of effort in revising. Tips:
1) Make good summaries. Summaries that you can actually refer to in times of panic.
2) Make notes that are easy to understand. Even though it's an open book exam, it is very difficult to rely on the textbook for notes especially in a time-attack situation (you can probably refer to the legislation section at the back part of the book if it's not in your summary, but the content? difficult). Again, the need for a well-written summary is critical.
3) Answer ALL past exam questions. Re-do ALL tutorial questions. Have a look back at the assignment question and solution. Start revising in Week 11. Go to Helen's consultation the day before the exam (very critical and helpful indeed!). These suggestions will definitely help you 'master' the art of writing for legal cases and help you, in a way, to remember your notes, legislations, and cases that you'll need in answering the question (so you can save precious time by not referring to your notes every now and then).
As you can see, this subject is not that bad. It's just really effort-intensive. This subject is required for Accounting students for CA/CPA Accreditation Also, this is a good 'preview' of studying law if you want to do JD.

Yes (only Audio)

Helen Anderson

Yes, past exams included in the reading guide; Tute questions also past exam questions!

5 out of 5

Commercial Applications of Company Law - need to buy

1x 2-hr lecture, 1x 1-hr tutorial

2014 Semester 1

85 (H1)