Behind the scenes: The evolution of my 6-month Paper D1/M2 study groups

Written By Zsofia Pintz

As I was planning the upcoming M2 study groups for EQE 2027, I was thinking about the past 5 years and how much my study group meetings have changed.

Every year, I had the naive thought that the following year would be less stressful, as I would “simply” repeat what I did the previous year. (Not that my goal is to have a simple job, but it would be kind of nice if I wasn’t constantly anxious and stressed before all of my meetings.) However, this never ended up being the case, because I always had ideas on how to improve my courses and make them even more helpful for candidates. At the end of the day, making the study groups as helpful as possible for candidates has always been the main goal.

I thought it might be interesting to show you what these changes were and how our study group meetings work.

But maybe I should first explain why I have been using the term “study group” instead of “course”. My aim has always been to create a safe space where candidates can ask anything and learn by doing, not by simply listening. Just listening can sometimes be boring, and it is easy to lose focus. So my goal has always been to create interactive meetings where all participants can freely talk. This is also why I have always preferred the term “study group” over “course”. However, it has recently come to my attention that a few more conservative or traditional patent attorneys (for example in Germany) don’t necessarily understand why anyone would pay for this format. Which is a completely fair question. Even though I call my courses “study groups”, participants still get all the benefits of a legal course: legal refreshers, explanations, answers to their questions, many written materials, a study plan, homework, quizzes, etc.

Anyway, back to the evolution of my D1/M2 study groups.

In 2021-2022, when preparing candidates for the 2022 Paper D (i.e. during my first tutoring season), we already had a great study plan (very similar to the current one, where we go through all legal topics by Christmas and then started doing past exams from January) and a small, supportive group. Other than that, the study group didn’t offer much more. I cherry-picked about 6 legal questions every week for candidates as homework, and then we discussed the answers and the related side questions during our weekly meetings. Providing accountability, weekly meetings, and weekly homework were a very important part of this course from the start. Regular meetings also help candidates stay connected and realise that others are going through the same challenges.

In 2022-2023, when preparing candidates for the 2023 Paper D (i.e. during my second tutoring season), I have also added a winter break, an introductory meeting about Paper D to the study plan and created a closed LinkedIn group so that candidates could stay connected, exchange experiences, and support each other outside the meetings. As to the content of the course, in addition to what I did before, I also started adding my comments, examples, explanations to the questions and/or answers.

In 2023-2024, when preparing candidates for the 2024 Paper D (i.e. during my third tutoring season), the number of D1 study groups I tutored grew to four. Content-wise, in addition to what I did before, I made an important improvement and started providing legal refreshers about the topic of the week at the beginning of the meetings (not for each topic, but most of them). These were about 3-4 page summaries I created, listing the most important things related to the weekly topics. I have also added a full, additional meeting about Unitary patents.

In 2024-2025, when preparing candidates for the 2025 Paper D (i.e. during my fourth tutoring season), I kept everything from the previous programs, but I added more helpful comments to the answers, and also improved my legal refreshers a lot. Both their length and quality, and made sure that I could provide a refresher on all EPC topics. Furthermore, I sometimes added small quizzes to the meetings. Moreover, as we came closer to the exam, I gave candidates the opportunity to request additional refreshers, for example we dedicated complete meetings to revising PCT, or renewal fees.

In 2025-2026, when preparing candidates for the 2026 Paper D and the first M2 exam (i.e. during my fifth tutoring season), I improved so many things again! I invested a lot more time into preparing each meeting, but it allowed me to make the sessions more structured and useful for candidates.

Firstly, I have moved all recordings, files, refreshers, my answers to the homework questions to Google Drive. This was so much more user-friendly than what I did in the previous years. Candidates could access everything in the same place, and any amendment or correction in the files didn’t cause any issues, as they had access to the documents directly.

On the other hand, my legal refreshers grew a lot, often 8-10 pages long (I promise to not make them much longer as I don’t want to lose the point of being “refreshers” and not a full reference book 😅). It was especially nice to hear that many candidates found them useful enough to print and bring to the exam. My main goal is to keep these refreshers up-to-date and as accurate as possible. Discussing the topics by going through the refresher (and any side questions) was often 40-50 minutes. To make sure candidates don’t lose focus in this first part of the meeting, I drafted about 4 quiz questions for every meeting, testing the topic we had just discussed. So, I now have some experience in drafting legal questions, I enjoyed it a lot, even though it is a lot of work. (This also allows M2 candidates to practice different style legal questions, e.g. multiple choice, single choice, not only free-text questions.)

Another big improvement was adding Guidelines links to the answers to show candidates “where to read more?”, and I also started adding not only comments, but also “most important takeaways”, i.e. “if you only remember one thing from this question, this should be it” after each answer. My goal with this part was to help candidates highlight the most important points in their reference books.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to overwhelm candidates with materials, but help them annotate their reference books, understand the logic behind the rules and feel more confident when dealing with legal questions.

(Of course, there are always more changes in the background, like improving my answers, updating dates in the DeltaPatents questions or past D exams, changing the study plan to include the most recent exam, checking all the legal changes, changes in the GL, etc, but I tried to highlight the most important and interesting ones above.)

Side note: This is only how I run my study groups, Ignacio Lobato has a totally free hand when tutoring, so he is following his (awesome, but different from my) style. Candidates love his method too!

Both of our study groups are designed so that candidates can actively participate, ask follow-up questions, and see that others often struggle with the same issues. EQE preparation can feel quite isolating, especially if you are studying alongside full-time work. One of our main goals has always been to make candidates feel that they are not doing this alone.

On another note, thank you so much for your inquiries about the study groups for EQE 2027!

Since many of you have been asking about my upcoming courses, I thought I would also give you a short overview of the available study groups in this post. (You can also find them on the website.)

Paper F course:

Paper M2 course:

Paper M4 course:

Paper M1 course - plans:

Personally, I won’t have the capacity to tutor real-time M1 course(s), but I'm planning to create and record detailed, helpful online course(s) during the summer. You can purchase this online course later from the EQE shop.

I’m also hoping to collaborate with a tutor to offer real-time M1 course(s) for you.

Paper M3 course - plans:

Personally, I won’t have the capacity to tutor real-time M3 course(s), but I'm planning to create and record detailed, helpful online course(s) during the summer. You can purchase this online course later from the EQE shop.

I’m also hoping to collaborate with a tutor to offer real-time M3 course(s) for you.

Zsofia Pintz
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Munich Meetup