Law Firm Verbal Reasoning and Situational Judgement Test Preparation

Most law firms and companies with large legal teams use online tests as part of their recruitment processes. While these tests can pose a great challenge, you can improve your performance and achieve a high score with the help of JobTestPrep's practice tests and study guides. We offer practice solutions for some of the most commonly used psychometric tests in the recruitment of legal positions, including critical thinking tests, verbal and numerical reasoning tests, and situational judgement tests.

The purpose of legal aptitude tests is to assess a candidate's abilities against the set of skills essential for every lawyer. In particular, most law firm applicants can expect to take a verbal reasoning test or the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal. Read on for more information about legal psychometric tests and how to prepare for them. If you are interested in becoming a Barrister, read up on the Bar Course Aptitude Test.

The ability to assess the logic contained in written information is a key skill for many lawyers. Verbal reasoning tests assess an applicant's ability to understand, analyse, and interpret the information provided in a written text. On a legal verbal reasoning test, this information is likely to be presented in some form of a legal passage, or the question may ask you to use legal ideas to answer. You will either be asked to answer multiple-choice questions or to assess whether a statement following the text is true, false, or you cannot say based only on the information contained in the text. 

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal is a hig-level analytical test provided by Pearson TalentLens. Thinking critically involves considering a range of information from a variety of sources, processing that information—logically but creatively—analysing it, challenging assumptions, and finally coming to a set of conclusions backed up by what you have read. On a Watson-Glaser test, you are presented with a text and asked to assess whether a subsequent statement is true, probably true, inadequate data, false, or probably false. Prepare for Watson-Glaser tests with our preparation pack.

Suited is a provider of AI-driven pre-employment exams ​for the law and finance sectors. Their assessments differ from one firm to the other, but they will typically include Suited's flagship products: the Essential Competencies Assessment and the Suited Psychometric Assessment. Learn more about the Suited Assessment.

Situational judgement tests for legal positions look at how you respond to situations that may come up in your everyday life as a corporate lawyer. This is a common test in the law firm recruitment process. Lawyers must be able to judge a situation well and decide on the best course of action going forward, often in a very short amount of time, and the situational judgement test for lawyers is one way of measuring this skill.

On a legal situational judgement test, you are presented with scenarios you may encounter as a trainee lawyer. Following the scenarios is a list of options on how to respond. Your task is to choose the correct course of action. Situational judgement tests are untimed, giving you time to consider each question carefully. The legal situational judgement skills the test examines are alluded to in the law firm's competencies and person profiles, but they usually include problem solving, teamwork, communication skills, and negotiation skills. Preparing for a situational judgement test can help you hone the underlying skills needed when assessing a situation.

Two testing companies, CEB's SHL and Pearson TalentLens, provide the majority of law firm assessments. Read more about some of the companies that use these tests.

As with all tests, preparation is extremely important ahead of your assessment. Preparing can help you learn, refresh, or hone skills that may need sharpening. Reasoning tests are often quite different than other tests you may have taken in the past, so preparing with practice tests is necessary to help familiarise you with the requirements of the test. This will, in turn, make settling in to the test easier and enable you to answer questions quicker and more accurately.

If you have not yet attended law school and are looking into the field, it is important to note that some of the leading law schools in the UK require candidates to sit the Law National Aptitude Test (LNAT). This test examines reasoning skills, the ability to make logical deductions, and the ability to interpret and analyse complex verbal information. This test also assesses how well candidates can make reasoned arguments.