Cameroon Bar Exam common mistakes
Cameroon Bar Exam · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Citing the OHADA Uniform Act on General Commercial Law or the Uniform Act on Commercial Companies and GIE as if it governed the validity and proof of all contracts, instead of applying the Civil Code regime to civil obligations and reserving the uniform acts to commercial acts and traders.
Candidates revise OHADA heavily because it is examinable and feels modern and concrete, then over-extend it to every contractual question, forgetting that Cameroonian civil obligations still flow from the old Civil Code as received and that the commercial code only applies to acts of commerce.
What to do instead
Before writing, classify the act: civil or commercial, and identify the person: trader or non-trader. State the applicable text expressly (Civil Code articles on consent, cause, object; OHADA uniform act only where the act is commercial or the party is a trader). Draft a one-page personal table mapping each obligation topic to its governing text and revise from that table, not from the uniform act alone.
Answering a family law problem by reciting the Civil Code rules on marriage and filiation without applying the Cameroonian statute on civil status and the specific ordonnance on family and succession matters, and without addressing the conflict between customary marriage and civil marriage registration.
The Civil Code is the familiar, teachable base, while the national family and succession texts and their amendments are less systematically taught; candidates also underestimate how much of the exam turns on registration, proof of marriage and the effect of customary celebration.
What to do instead
Build a checklist for every family problem: form of the marriage, proof and registration, effects between spouses, regime of property, filiation and its modes of proof, succession devolution. For each item note the national text and the role of the civil status registrar. Practise with hypotheticals where a customary marriage is later registered or never registered, and state the consequences step by step.
Treating the principle of legality in criminal law as satisfied by saying 'the conduct is punishable', without identifying the precise incriminating text, its elements and the penalty, and without checking whether a later more favourable law applies.
Under time pressure, candidates write the moral wrong rather than the legal definition; many have memorised offences from case summaries rather than from the code, and forget the rules on temporal application of criminal statutes and on strict interpretation.
What to do instead
For each offence, memorise a three-line template: legal basis and article, material element, moral element, penalty. In every answer, name the text before discussing facts. Add a reflex paragraph on non-retroactivity and on the retroactive effect of a more lenient law whenever dates appear in the facts.
Confusing the roles and time limits of the preliminary inquiry, the flagrant offence procedure and the judicial investigation, and mixing up the powers of the judicial police officer, the state counsel and the examining magistrate, including who may issue a remand in custody order.
Criminal procedure is learned as a narrative of stages rather than as a set of actors with distinct competences and clocks; candidates blur the file transmission duties and the supervision of custody, and the resulting answers are chronologically plausible but legally wrong.
What to do instead
Draw one diagram per procedure with three columns: actor, act permitted, time limit and form. Learn the custody clock and the mandatory notifications, the conditions for extending custody, and who controls it. In answers, proceed strictly stage by stage and state the competent authority at each step before discussing validity.
Filing or analysing a civil claim without first verifying competence: subject-matter jurisdiction, the monetary threshold, territorial rules and the special regimes for labour, administrative and commercial disputes, and without checking whether a prior attempt at amicable settlement or a mandatory preliminary step was required.
Candidates focus on the merits because that is what they have revised, and treat jurisdiction as a formality; they also forget that some claims are inadmissible without a prior request or conciliation attempt, and that raising incompetence has its own time limit and procedure.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed opening sequence for every procedural question: identify the claim, the parties, the competent court and its basis, the territorial link, the prior steps, the time limit for action, then the merits. Memorise the thresholds and the special jurisdictions as a table, and practise writing a short competence note before any pleading.
Describing enforcement measures in the abstract without distinguishing seizure of tangible property, garnishee seizure of debts, seizure of earnings and attachment of claims, and without stating the prerequisite enforceable title, the service formalities, the contestation route and the deadlines for each.
Enforcement is often revised last and learned from general summaries; the OHADA uniform act on simplified recovery and enforcement measures is technical, and candidates retain the name of the measure but not its conditions, its formal documents or its challenge procedure.
What to do instead
For each measure, memorise a card: enforceable title required, prior service or command, assets covered, formalities, effects, contestation before which judge and within what time. Write one full procedural chronology per measure. Revise the uniform act's own definitions rather than paraphrasing them from memory.
Confusing the legal forms of business organisation under the OHADA uniform act on commercial companies and GIE, attributing the wrong minimum capital, the wrong governance organs, the wrong liability of managers or the wrong rules on transfer of shares, and treating the GIE as a profit-making company.
The forms share vocabulary and candidates memorise a blended average; the GIE and the various company forms are studied in the same chapter, and the capital figures and organ names are easily swapped under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a comparison grid with one row per form and columns for capital, partners, liability, organs, decision rules, transfer of interests and dissolution. Fill it only from the uniform act. Add a separate note explaining that the GIE's purpose is to facilitate economic activity, not to share profits. Recite the grid from memory weekly.
Answering administrative law questions by asserting that an administrative act is unlawful without identifying the type of act, the ground of illegality invoked, the competent judge, the time limit for the recours and the effect of the absence of a prior compulsory administrative appeal where one is required.
Candidates know the vocabulary of legality but not the architecture of the recours; they also conflate the administration's own review with judicial review and forget that some remedies require a preliminary request to the administration before the court can be seised.
What to do instead
For every administrative problem, write the qualification of the act first, then the four legality grounds with the facts attached to each, then the procedural route: preliminary request, time limit, competent court, powers of the judge. Keep a separate list of acts that are not susceptible to review and of the situations where the administration's silence produces a decision.
Handling a labour law problem by applying the general Civil Code rules on contract termination and damages, without applying the Labour Code's own rules on dismissal, the required procedure and notification, the competent labour inspectorate step, the burden of proof and the special limitation periods.
The employment contract looks like an ordinary contract, so candidates import civil law reasoning; the Labour Code's procedural protections and its conciliation stage are under-revised, and the difference between lawful and abusive dismissal is often reduced to a slogan.
What to do instead
Treat labour as a self-contained regime: memorise the dismissal procedure step by step, the written notification requirements, the role of the labour inspector, the conciliation attempt before the labour court, and the heads of compensation. In answers, explicitly state that the Labour Code derogates from the civil law of contract and cite the specific provisions.
Writing the ethics or professional conduct answer as moral praise of the advocate's integrity, without citing the concrete duties and their consequences: confidentiality and its limits, conflict of interest, the prohibition on acting for both sides, fees and the handling of client funds, advertising restrictions, and the disciplinary procedure before the bar council.
Ethics is perceived as a soft subject that can be answered with generalities, and candidates do not learn the governing texts or the disciplinary machinery; they also ignore that the professional secrecy duty is qualified by narrow legal exceptions.
What to do instead
Learn ethics as a list of duties each paired with a sanction and a procedural route. For every scenario, name the duty engaged, the text, the risk of criminal or disciplinary liability, and the correct conduct. Practise short answers on conflicts of interest, on fees and on the duty to decline a case, and memorise the disciplinary stages and the competent bodies.