What Paper 5 covers

The scope (from the LPC syllabus)

• Trust accounting: sections 86 to 91 of the Legal Practice Act, the rules and requirements of the Legal Practitioners' Fidelity Fund, applying for a Fidelity Fund certificate, and the golden distinction between trust money and other money
• Legal costs: fees in litigious and non-litigious matters, estimates and mandates, deposits, contingency fees and retainers; every species of costs order (party-and-party, attorney-and-client, attorney-and-own-client, de bonis propriis, wasted, reserved, costs in the cause…); drawing a bill of costs; taxation from notice to allocatur; and the ethics of overreaching and undercharging
• Numeracy: interest (simple and compound), VAT, proportional allocation and apportionment of damages — with a calculator, under time pressure
• Practice management: business planning, marketing, financial management, administration, risk and insurance — the module for everyone who will one day open their own firm

Why it matters beyond the exam

This is the paper the profession takes personally: trust-account competence is the public's protection. It is also, for many candidates, the most unfamiliar material in the whole assessment — start it early.