Follow our insights to give yourself the best chance of success at this Certificate Level and ICAEW CFAB exam.
At a glance
Sitting: on demand
Duration: 1.5 hours
Format: 50 multiple-choice, multi-part multiple-choice or multiple-response questions
Pass mark: 55%
Syllabus weighting:
- Introduction to legal principles (10%)
- The impact of civil law on business and professional services (30%)
- Company and insolvency law (40%)
- The impact of criminal law on business and professional services (10%)
- The impact of law in the professional context (10%)
Need to know
This exam introduces the aspects of law you’ll encounter further on in your ACA studies and in your career. It’s not designed to make you a legal expert, but to give you an understanding of the basics and the terminology you may come across in the course of your work. It will introduce you to the English legal system and how it works; contract law; company law; criminal law in a financial context, including money laundering, bribery and fraud; and law in the professional context, including data protection and employment.
While Business Law doesn’t flow directly through into Professional and Advanced Level modules in the same way as some of the other Certificate Level exams, you’ll encounter more specific law as you get into increasingly complex financial reporting, audit and assurance, and tax at the later stages. This is a 1.5-hour exam with a total of 50 multiple-choice or multiple-response questions worth two marks each. Some are based on scenarios – ‘If X does this, then Y does that, what is the outcome?’ – while others are a straightforward factual test of your law knowledge.
How to approach it
Business Law is sometimes a self-study module and, as with all the Certificate Level exams, there’s a lot of content to work through. Be methodical: tackle the workbook a section at a time – it’s broken up into bite-sized chunks, with plenty of illustrations and examples – then practise the questions at the end of the chapter and in the question bank. With lots of different types of information to learn, it can be helpful to try a variety of revision techniques: flow charts for processes like setting up a company, flashcards, mind maps, or just finding someone to test you.
The biggest mistake students make with Business Law is thinking they can cram it at the last minute. Take a measured, little-and-often approach, and try to practise as much as possible – every time you answer a question, you’ll become more familiar with the basic rules. If you get an answer wrong and you don’t understand why, make sure you go back to the relevant chapter and work it out.
When it comes to the exam itself, read each question carefully and consider all the possible answers. The question might only be a line or two long, but don’t rush ahead: make sure you’ve picked up all the information that’s in there and thought it through to be absolutely certain you’ve chosen the right answer. Be disciplined, too, in your time management: you should be aiming for around a minute and a half for each question. If you haven’t worked it out once the time is up, don’t get bogged down: flag it and move on – you can always come back at the end if you have time.
Read more about Business Law in the ACA Syllabus Handbook.
