How long should you study for the Paralegal Licensing Exam (P1)?

Ask ten people how long to study for the P1 and you will get ten numbers, most of them borrowed from someone else's life. A better answer comes from three things you can measure: how many pages there are, how fast you read them, and which days you can study.

Start with the pages

The Law Society's study materials for the paralegal examination run to a little over 700 pages once you include the appendices, which hold the Paralegal Rules of Conduct, the Guidelines and the By-Laws. Those appendices are not optional reading. The Law Society says the examination questions are drawn from that year's study materials and that no outside material is required, so the materials are the whole syllabus.

Then your reading speed

This is dense legal text, and nobody reads it like a novel. With about five hours of real study in a day, most people cover somewhere between 45 and 60 pages. Do not take that figure on trust. Read for one hour the way you actually study, with notes and highlighting, count the pages, and multiply by the hours you can keep up.

On a day when you also work a full shift, 20 pages is a fair target. Planning for more usually means falling behind by the second week.

Read it twice

One read tells you where things are. A second read is where you start to remember them. The second read is quicker, because you are recognising the material and no longer meeting it for the first time. Two reads is what we suggest, and it is what most candidates manage to fit in. If your calendar only allows one, plan for one properly, and spend the time you save on practice questions.

Leave room for practice and for a life

Reading is not the same as answering 160 multiple choice questions in four and a half hours. Keep a block of days for practice questions after the second read, and keep the final week light: weak areas, your index and tabs, and sleep.

Keep one day a week free as well. Plans rarely fail in the last week. They fail near the middle, when you are tired, and a day off each week is what gets you through the other six.

What that adds up to

Put those pieces together with default numbers (50 pages on a study day, two reads, one day off a week) and the P1 comes to about eight weeks. Working full time stretches it. Studying full time and reading quickly shortens it.

You do not have to do the arithmetic by hand. Our free P1 study planner takes your exam date, your reading speed and your working days, tells you the latest date you can start, and prints a calendar showing which section to read each day and which pages. It needs no account.

If the date you get has already passed

Then you have three honest options, in this order. Move to a later sitting, if your licensing timeline allows it. Turn a working day into a full study day. Or read more pages a day, if you truly can. What you should not do is cut the practice days. They are the part of the plan that most resembles the exam.

Dates, deadlines and fees for each sitting are in our guide to the P1, with links to the Law Society's own pages.