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Neuroscience and the law: the mens rea of the criminal mind
“Law in its earliest days tries to make men answer for all the ills of an obvious kind that their deeds bring upon their fellows” (Pollock and Maitland, A history of English law, 3rd edition 1899)
The law has for a long time been wrangling with need to identify the “ills of an obvious kind”, as they are needed to work out whether a criminal offence has taken place. The constituent elements of the criminal act can normally be easily identified for any criminal offence. In England and Wales, the terminology is as follows. The “actus reus” is the act of the crime itself, such as the fraud, theft or murder. The “mens rea” – the Latin term meaning “guilty mind” – is usually (not always) one of the necessary elements of a crime. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in terms of Sir Edward Coke’s classic statement ‘actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea’ – this translates as ‘the act does not make a person guilty unless their mind is also guilty’.
Despite some heated discussions of the definition of the mens rea particularly during of the course of last century, the basic importance of the mens rea is not in dispute any more. For example, in the case of R v Tolson [1889]: “Ordinarily speaking, a crime is not committed if the mind of the person doing the act in question be innocent” (1). Furthermore,in his seminal work, Sir James Stephen took this idea further, reflecting on his understanding of classical law:
“The maxim is sometimes said to be a fundamental principle of the whole criminal law, but I think that, like many other Latin sentences supposed to form part of the Roman law, the maxim not only looks more instructive than it really is, but suggests fallacies which it does not precisely state. It is frequently, though ignorantly, supposed to mean that there cannot be such a thing as legal guilt where there is no moral guilt, which is obviously untrue, as there is always a possibility of a conflict between law and morals.” (2)
Fundamental to the “criminal mind” in law is therefore intention. Frustratingly, intention has been given never been given any statutory definition by the judiciary, and its meaning must therefore be worked from a series of judicial decisions. A number of different words are used to express intention in the various criminal laws, and whilst the full definition of intention is clearly outside of the scope of this article, it is worth noting that intention can be either “direct”, where the defendant intends a particular consequence of their act; or it can be “oblique”, where the defendant foresees the certainty of a consequence of their act even if it is not their main objective. In some unique, transferred malice occurs, this when the intention to harm one individual inadvertently causes a second person to be hurt instead. In other words, the brain must somehow be capable of making an appropriate intention, and how the brain might do this voluntarily or not will be the subject of future articles.
Back to the jurisprudence of the mens rea, the nature of the criminal decision has, however, been clarified by the case law of England. David Ormerod in Smith and Hogan’s Criminal Law provides that, “While there is a moral basis for the notions of fault and degrees of fault in the criminal law, legal “fault” does not necessarily involve moral blameworthiness according to the English case of R v Kingston [1994] from the House of Lords.” In this textbook, sometimes cited itself in judgments in the House of Lord, Lord Mustill is quoted from the judgment of that case which provides that, “I would therefore reject that part of the respondent’s argument which treats the absence of moral fault on the part of the appellant as sufficient in itself to negative the essential mental element of the offence.”
That the moral aspect of an action is irrelevant may seem odd as it can be argued that moral responsibility is a particularly relevant area of philosophy and psychology to the law and the criminal justice system (5). Philosophical reflection on moral responsibility has historically relied upon one of two broad interpretations of the concept: (a) the merit-based view, according to which praise or blame would be an appropriate reaction toward the candidate if and only if she merits—in the sense of ‘deserves’—such a reaction; or (b) the consequentialist view, according to which praise or blame would be appropriate if and only if a reaction of this sort would likely lead to a desired change in the agent and/or her behavior. Versions of the consequentialist view have continued to further concept of moral responsibility, and have increasingly focused on offering alternative versions of the merit-based view and questioning the assumption that there is a single unified concept of moral responsibility (6). Therefore, recent contributions from cognitive neuroscience and moral responsibility have a potentially important role in evolving further our definition of the mens rea in law.
References:
(1) 23 QBD: 185-6
(2) History of the Criminal Law (1883)
(3) R v Kingston 1994 3 All Er 33 [House of Lords]
(4) Smith and Hogan’s Criminal Law. Ed. David Ormerod 9th Ed. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.
(5) Dennett, Daniel, 2003. Freedom Evolves (New York: Viking Press).
(6) Strawson, PF (1974) Freedom and Resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy 48; Reprinted in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Oxford 1974, pp. 1-25. References are to the reprinted version.
Neuroscience and the law – the electrophysiology of free will
A synthesis of evidence from various methodological approaches have informed on the cognitive neuroscience of free will. Undoubtedly, the most seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick her wrist while he measured the associated activity in her brain (in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential).
This figure provides Libet’s original published results.
This picture shows the readiness potentials (RP) preceding self-initiated voluntary acts. Each horizontal row is the computer-averaged potential for 40 trials, recorded by a system with an active electrode on the scalp, either at the midline-vertex (Cz) or on the left side (contralateral to the performing right hand) approximately over the motor/premotor cortical area that controls the hand (Cc). For subjects G.L., S.B. and B.D., this instruction was given at the start of all sessions. Nevertheless, each of these subjects reported some experiences of loose preplanning in some of the 40-trial series; those series exhibited type I RPs rather than type II.
Although it was well known that the readiness potential preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether the readiness potential corresponded to the felt intention to move. To determine when the subject felt the intention to move, he asked the subject to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position when she felt that she had the conscious will to move. Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick her wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that she had decided to move. Libet’s findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a “conscious decision”, and that the subject’s belief that it occurred at the behest of her will was only due to her retrospective perspective on the event. He showed that the preparatory brain activity that occurs as you make a ‘free’ choice about something is actually made a few hundred milliseconds before the decision reaches your conscious awareness. In other words, your brain makes a decision before you do, and ‘free will’ is an illusion. (1)
This interpretation appears to leave little room for conscious processes in the control of action—or so it might seem. Whilst there is some debate as to conscious processes cause actions, these data remain consistent with the idea that conscious processes could still exert some effect over actions by modifying the brain processes already under way. The fact that conscious awareness of intention precedes movement by a couple of hundred milliseconds means that a person could still inhibit certain actions from being made. This therefore means that inhibition is potentially more important than action in the control of action.
Further evidence also suggests that our subjective experience of the beginning of the movement must also come from some premotor process—something that takes place before the muscles themselves contract. Although some investigators have questioned the validity of the timing as judged by subjects in Libet’s experiment, his results have had considerable impact and have been interpreted as casting serious doubt on the existence of a mind-body chain of causation. Moreover, numerous other studies now confirm the phenomenon of anticipatory awareness of action. In an important variation of this task, Haggard and Eimer asked subjects to decide not only when to move their hands, but also to decide which hand to move. In this case, the felt intention correlated much more closely with the “laterakused readiness potential” (LRP), an ERP component which measures the difference between left and right hemisphere brain activity. Haggard and Eimer argue that the feeling of conscious will therefore must follow the decision of which hand to move, since the LRP reflects the decision to lift a particular hand. (2)
Furthermore, a recent study by Soon and colleagues (Soon et al., 2008) has replicated Libet’s results by using modern brain imaging techniques, a more accurate way of measuring decision making in the brain: They found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. The authors argued that this delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness. (3) Finally, related experiments have shown that neurostimulation could affect which hands people move, even though the experience of free will was intact. Ammon and Gandevia (1990) found that it was possible to influence which hand people move by stimulating frontal regions that are involved in movement planning using transcranial magnetic stimulation in either the left or right hemisphere of the brain. (4)
References
(1) Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W., Pearl, D.K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. 106 (3):623–642.
(2) Haggard, P. and Eimer, M. (1999). On the relation between brain potentials and the awareness of voluntary movements. Experimental Brain Research 126, 128–133.
(3) Soon, CS, Brass M, Heinze, HJ,and Haynes, JD. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience 11, 543 – 545 (2008)
(4) Ammon, K. and Gandevia, S.C. (1990) Transcranial magnetic stimulation can influence the selection of motor programmes. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 53: 705–707.
Preface to Book 2 by Legal Recruit : situational judgement tests
Book 2 “300 online situational judgement test questions for law firm applications” has now been published. This Book is a companion to a brand new innovative website, Legal Recruit, designed to boost the chances of law students applying for training contracts and vacation placements pursuant to online psychometric testing. Legal Recruit is an independent project of mine, and aligns with my ambition to make legal education, training and opportunities fair for students with disabilities. The platform offers features for students with visual impairments and/or reading difficulties. The Preface to the book is reproduced below.
Legal recruiters are concerned that applicants make a good cultural fit with the organisation they are hoping to join. Corporates, including corporate law firms, have a very clear idea about what competences they are looking for, and there is a surprising degree of agreement in their shared values in achieving profitability. Good recruitment works well, for both the candidate and the firm, but a lot can go wrong in the process. This book consists of 80 situational judgement brand-new questions.
Ideally, recruitment should be exploring which candidate has the most potential to fit into the organisational structure and culture of that firm, but too often it ends up being a case of ‘damage limitation’. The utilisation of this approach is most dangerous for firms which aim to encourage innovation or entrepreneurship, as many firms in the City claim to be.
Resources on the Legal Recruit platform
Legal Recruit is a brand new, innovative platform to help candidates for corporates, including law firms, shine in their application process. It is found at http://www.legal-recruit.org
Although it has in mind GDL and LPC students applying for training contracts or vacation placements, the tests do not assess actual legal knowledge. While verbal reasoning tests vary somewhat, the verbal reasoning test on the Legal Recruit platform involve questions of the ‘TRUE’, ‘FALSE’ or ‘CANNOT SAY’ variety often experienced by law students as applicants. You can actually take a full-length verbal reasoning test, and immediately on its completion you will get a free, confidential report providing a total mark as well as an item-by-item breakdown. The situational judgement tests, while often referring to corporate law scenarios for trainees, test important competences for all trainees in corporate ifrms. Legal Recruit has a number of resources which will help you improve in your performance on online psychometric tests, or help to demystify what they are about. The platform also allows to practice online verbal reasoning tests and situational judgement tests.
Useful pages
Online tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/psychometric-testing/
Competences : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/competencies/
Verbal reasoning tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/verbal-reasoning-test/
Situational judgement tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/situational-judgement-test/
Vision or reading difficulties : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/disabilities/
Playing the system
It is vital for the candidate to know ‘how to play the system’, what his or her motivation in applying for certain types of firms. Corporate law firms often look for relevant work experience, evidence of key competences on the application form, and a reasonable degree (usually II.1 or higher). The vast majority of these firms will make you do some sort of psychological assessment, whatever your actual proven academic ability. You should consider carefully whether the corporate firm where you want to apply takes such tests seriously, and consider whether you wish to apply there. If you do, it is worth getting good at them, as often they will look at the results before considering whether to invite you to interview or not. Psychological assessments vary, and not all are indeed accreditated by the British Psychological Society (BPS). The BPS upholds standards in psychological assessments, and it is well worth looking at their website, which contains a gamut of useful advice and guidelines (http://www.psychtesting.org.uk/).
You are advised to examine carefully the advice for each stage of the recruitment process for your chosen firm, and good luck. It is claimed by recruiters that performance on such tests mirror your ability to do the job; that past performance is a good indicator for future performance; whether this is actually true or not is an intense area of debate, but ensure that you know how best to come across in their specific recruitment process. It might be worth seeing if you can obtain a one-to-one with the careers advisor in your law school, who will be able to steer you through the complexities of the online application form, to online assessments and interviews.
It is worth speaking to the Careers Unit in your law school about how to tackle the application form. The online application form contains lots of subtle points, and it may be worth being aware of them before you fill it in, e.g. http://legal-aware.org/2011/07/law-careers-how-to-write-a-good-training-contract-application-form/
What are “psychometric tests”?
Psychological assessments can be partly used to assess the suitability of law students for a corporate law job. Intelligent recruiters will however not base their decision to invite you for interview on them solely, and they will often freely admit to this if or when you meet them. Any assessments are supposed to be developed using some very technical and complex procedures in order to ensure that they really do measure what they claim to measure and that they do so with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Most online psychological assessments are designed to be carried out in a formal and standard manner. You should ensure “the basics”, for example, that the room is comfortable, well lit, nicely ventilated, and ‘free from interruptions’. Such ‘standardisation’ ensures that everyone who takes the test is given the same information and the same opportunities. It is argued that the results of the test can be used to place individuals in order of ability, to indicate individual qualities in relation to the entire group of applicants.
The purpose of testing involved in the testing process should be clearly communicated to you in the application process. The purpose of testing in the entire application process should be communicated to you by the law firm, together with what the law firm is going to do with the results once the test is completed. The descriptions of the tests should be clearly provided, and you should have a very careful look at any examples. It is assumed that the test chosen by the recruiter bears some relation, at least, to the skills that might be needed at your chosen law firm as a trainee, to complete the requirements of your training contract.
What can I do to practice beforehand?
Most test publishers provide practice materials that are similar in form and content to the actual tests. You should be notified well in advance of the test session as to whether practice materials are available. For some online tests, you are likely to be exposed to the practice questions shortly before you do the actual test, and you may be able to time the actual test after you had proper time to consider the practice questions. This depends on the competence of the recruitment department of your corporate law firm.
The British Psychological Society’s Code of Good Practice for Psychological Testing states that:
‘People who use psychological assessments are expected by the British Psychological Society to: Ensure that all test takers are well informed and well prepared for the test session, and that all have had access to practice or familiarization materials where appropriate.’
If you are taking a test, and the tester sends out practice materials as recommended by best practice guidelines, you should have a look at these sample materials very carefully. Do not just check to see that you have the correct answer to the practice questions, but ask yourself ‘Why is this the correct answer and how did I work that out?’ The practice materials are developed to give the candidate familiarity with the kinds of thinking that they will have to use in the testing session so this will be time well spent.
How are individual with disabilities treated?
The British Psychological Society’s Code of Good Practice for Psychological Testing states clearly that:
‘People who use psychological assessments in settings are expected by the British Psychological Society to: Give due consideration to factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, disability and special needs, educational background and level of ability in using and interpreting the results of tests.’
If you or your dependant has a disability and feel that you may need special conditions, it is important that this is brought to the notice of the person responsible for the testing as soon as the testing session has been arranged. This will give maximum time for the assessor to check what special requirements can be provided and what arrangements can be made.
This book
This book contains 80 practice situational judgement questions (SJTs). The ‘correct responses’ have been determined by an analysis of the current law and business corporate management literature, and from real-life responses to these questions by respondents on the @legalaware twitter thread. All the questions and passages are unique to us; we have absolutely no knowledge of the questions used by the actual common test providers.
Using realistic work-based scenarios that deal with specific issue or problem, learners are presented with three possible solutions – and asked to identify the best of them. Your response to these scenarios might give the law firm a clear indication whether you have the ability to carry out particular tasks and how you might cope in real-life situations. Equally importantly, the scenarios give you an insight into the type of challenges you will face in the constantly changing environment of a busy corporate law firm. You should look carefully of the website of the firm to which you apply. Only some firms set a SJT at all, and the format of the SJT may be different. For example, you might be expected to rank the best to the worst out of four options instead.
What are situational judgement tests?
There has been a small explosion in the research done into ‘situational judgement tests’ (SJT) for employment selection (Weekley and Ployhart, 2006). SJTs present applicants with work-related situations and possible responses to the situations. There are broadly two types of instructions (reviewed by McDaniel et al., 2007). Behavioural tendency instructions ask respondents to identify how they would likely behave in a given situation. Knowledge instructions ask respondents to evaluate the effectiveness of possible responses to a given situation. Tests assessing an individual’s judgement concerning work-related situations have had a long history in the psychological assessment literature (McDaniel et al., 2001). For example, during World War II, Army psychologists attempted to assess the judgement of soldiers (Northrup, 1989). These judgement tests consisted of scenarios with a number of alternative scenarios. Solutions rested on the person’s ability to draw on his common sense, experience, and general knowledge, rather than logical reasoning.
In an influential study by Chan and Schmitt (2002), data from 160 civil service employees were analysed, with a view to demonstrating the validity of the SJT in predicting overall job performance as well as three performance dimensions: task performance (core technical proficiency; problem analysis, written communication, oral communication), motivational contextual performance (job dedication; motivation to perform, motivation to learn, motivation to work hard), and interpersonal contextual performance (interpersonal facilitation; conflict resolution, negotiation, teamwork and co-operation). Chan and Schmitt (2002) also felt that situational judgement tests provided incremental validity over prediction from cognitive ability, personality traits, and job experience.
Previously, Huffcutt and colleagues (2001) had attempted to elucidate the most suitable construct categories Their constructs included mental capability, knowledge and skills, basic personality traits, applied social skills, interests and preferences, organizational fit, and physical attributes. Recently, Christian, Edwards and Bradley (2010) argue that many studies have failed however, to report the constructs actually measured in SJTs. A construct-level focus in the situational judgement test literature is therefore lacking. Christian and colleagues (2001) found that situational judgement tests most often assess leadership and interpersonal skills and those situational judgement tests measuring teamwork skills and leadership skills have relatively high validities for overall performance.
There has been an increasing drive towards standardization of these tasks. For example, the LR SJT has questions in written format. There is inevitably a difference for oral questions, or SJTs in video format (it is claimed that video SJTs have more subtle nuances involving social cognition or emotional intelligence which can be picked upon). Also, the questions can potentially vary in scenario length (longer scenarios tend to have more detail), and how scenarios are profession-specific (for example, type of firm, law/medicine/business). Finally, the questions can vary in format. In the LR SJT, and for example in the 2010 and 2011 Clifford Chance SJT, you have to pick one best out of the options given. In some tests, rather, you may be required to rank your choices in order of preference. To the best of our knowledge, Clifford Chance will not be using the SJT in 2011 recruitment, and the format of the Eversheds SJT is entirely different to that presented in this book and on the Legal Recruit website.
Competences
Law firms tend to have a very clear idea what they’re looking for. These are called “competences”. ‘Situational judgement tests’ look at competencies. For more information about competencies which legal recruiters look for, please look at the ‘LegalRecruit’ website page here, http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/competencies/.
The LR situational judgement test focuses on six competences, and there is a chapter devoted to each competence. Please note, however, that you may find that, as in real life, scenarios can cover more than one competence, and you may indeed find some conflicts in the importance of certain competences. Our key competences are problem solving, a proactive attitude, commitment to excellence, communication and negotiation, teamwork, and attention-to-detail and leadership. In this book, you will get three options for each scenario (A to C), and all you have to do is to pick on. In this book, you will get an explanation for the ‘correct’ answer.
Problem-solving
Do you have the mental agility and intellectual rigour to analyse problems and apply this analysis to develop novel, unexpected solutions? The problems you face can be large or small, simple or complex, and easy or difficult to solve. Regardless of the nature of the problems, a fundamental part of every trainee lawyer’s role is finding ways to solve them. It is therefore felt that being a confident problem solver will really important to your success a trainee lawyer. Much of that confidence comes from having a good process to use when approaching a problem. The four basic steps in problem solving comprise defining the problem, generating alternatives, evaluating and selecting alternatives, and implementing solutions.
Proactive minds
Are you naturally inquisitive with an openness to new ideas and the initiative to turn them into practical results? Initiative is often misunderstood because it is simply not about meeting performance goals or targets; it is often about going the extra mile. Initiative may be about identifying a need and championing a solution for the benefit of the law firm, without being asked to do so. Initiative involves a sense of responsibility for the company’s well-being and a few guiding principles. Initiative is about taking steps to make the law firm better, and not about wasting time tackling unimportant matters. To make the distinction, try determining the impact a certain action would make on your team’s performance, the company’s bottom-line or the company’s long-term vision.
Being proactive means thinking and acting ahead – basically, this means using foresight. It is a great method for avoiding more work down the road but also can be extremely important for averting disasters, planning well for the future and for instituting systems at work, in study, and at home that make life easier for not just you, but others as well.
Commitment to excellence
Do you hold yourself to the highest standards of performance even when the going is tough? And are you passionate about continuously raising and refining your own performance levels? Do you persevere when pursuing a project, but remain flexible if there are obstacles in your way? A ‘commitment to excellence’ is broadly defined to mean that an employee ‘adopts a conscientious and proactive approach to work to achieve and maintain excellent standards’. Every member a corporate law firm must strive to achieve and maintain the highest professional and personal standards, thereby enhancing both the competence and cohesion of that law firm.
It is interesting to have a look at various law firms you know to see how they present their commitment to excellence. There are in fact various ways in which law firms can commit to excellence, and you should search for the term ‘shared values’ on the corporate website. It is interesting in fact to consider how law firms can vary markedly even in their marketing taglines. Many law firms believe that community and social responsibility (corporate social responsibility) involves an understanding of the impact our business has on the environment, the welfare of individuals, the community and the sustainability of the world’s resources. This means that running a business goes beyond making profits and acquiring wealth, and law firms increasingly acknowledge our obligation to consider the wider interests of our clients, employees and the community in which we function. In economic terms, responsible approach in these areas can lead to greater efficiencies, lower costs and an improved reputation as a responsible service provider and employer.
The SRA Handbook sets out the standards and requirements we expect regulated community and trainees to achieve and observe, for the benefit of the clients they serve and in the public interest. Whilst the purpose of a SJT will not be to ‘examine’ you on the Code of Conduct, your compliance with this Code is of course expected at minimum. The SRA’s approach to regulation is outcomes-focused and risk-based, so that clients receive services in a way that best suits their needs. There is more information about this on the LegalAware blog, http://legal-aware.org/2011/12/blogpost-2-out-of-2-in-the-legalaware-series-on-outcomes-focused-regulation/. It is really important that you make every effort to stay in good physical or mental health for our own health and well-being and also as a personal responsibility towards people you work for/with. It is our responsibility to develop our own and others’ professional understanding of how air corporate law is most effectively applied and how it can remain relevant and capable in contemporary environments.
Strong communication skills
Can you communicate fluently, clearly and concisely? Persuade and negotiate with others in both group and individual situations? Make complex information understandable to clients? What will you do if you find there are problems with communication? Lawyers, it is mooted, frequently fail to treat clients with respect, do not consider the nature of interpersonal relations with clients to be an important aspect of law practice, tend to be motivated more by financial returns than by professional values, are inaccessible and unresponsive, are poor communicators, do not know how to deal with clients effectively, and are sometimes even indifferent to clients’ feelings.
Teamwork
Do you have the confidence to collaborate, seek feedback, share ideas and build credibility through your interaction other people? You might read about the importance of good teamwork with a focus on areas such as conflict resolution, maximising your contribution, and using ‘small wins’ to motivate other members of your team. Often quoted, Bruce Tuckman’s classic description of the stages of group development is easy to understand and remember, but it helps to go back and look at what’s behind each stage. Tuckman is a respected educational psychologist who first described the (then) four stages of group development in 1965, soon after leaving Princeton. Looking at the behaviour of small groups in a variety of environments, he recognised the distinct phases they progress through, and suggested they need to experience all four stages before they achieve maximum effectiveness.
Attention-to-detail and leadership
Can you manage your own workload, stay organised under pressure, pay attention to detail and be relied on to complete each task accurately and completely? Corporate law firms need trainees who can handle both the small and large parts of a task. Such individuals will not overlook what needs to be done and can be depended on to do each task accurately and completely. Proofreading is an example of where attention-to-detail is critical – this is especially important whether you are a medical writer, for example, or a legal draftsman. It’s well worth looking at “top tips” for how you can be a good proofreader, and bear in mind that legal recruiters will go through your application form “with a fine toothcomb” to look for any mistakes. Legal recruiters also are often looking for ‘future leaders’, although they do not give a coherent description of leadership qualities they are looking for. You might find interesting to read about effective leadership styles, or creating a vision, for example.
Reading difficulty (dyslexia)
Dyslexia can be a legally recognised disability depending on its severity. Therefore, when applicants or candidates are being assessed, the qualified test user should have due regard to the employment provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) or Equality Act (2010); this makes it unlawful for an employer to treat a disabled person less favourably than a non-disabled person without good reason. Discrimination is outlawed in a wide range of employment activities including selection, promotion and training.
The British Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as:
‘A combination of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling and writing. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills. It is particularly related to mastering and using written language, which may include alphabetic, numeric and musical notation.’
In selection for a training contract or vacation placement, an individual with dyslexia In is likely to encounter difficulty with tests of verbal reasoning, spelling and functional literacy. The law requires that accommodations are made for disabled people including those with dyslexia to ensure that selection procedures do not disadvantage them. The employer is concerned with eliciting accurate information on abilities to use in making decisions.
The standardised nature of these tests is one of the main contributors to their effectiveness and objectivity. Arbitrary modifications to the test or administration procedure are likely to invalidate the results and render standard norm groups and score interpretations meaningless. A common modification for individuals with dyslexia is to adjust the timing of the test. However, the amount of extra time required will depend on the way the dyslexia manifests itself, its severity, the test(s) being used and their relationship to the job requirements. Only a relevant professional can determine what is appropriate. Whether adjustments have been made to standard test procedures or not, careful administration can help ensure that individuals with dyslexia have a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills.
As with many disabilities, stress may exacerbate the impact of dyslexia. Therefore, a calm and understanding approach on the part of the administrator is important.
People with dyslexia may have difficulty with test instructions. This can be due to reading difficulties, or to a difficulty with short-term memory and/or sequencing which is common with dyslexia.
Visual impairments and the law
Visual impairment covers a wide range of conditions. Even a person who is registered blind may have some residual vision, e.g. the ability to discern light from dark or even quite good acuity within a severely limited field of vision. Partial sight also covers many different types of conditions. These can range from very blurred vision to loss of some areas of the field of vision. For some people the act of focusing can be difficult, this can mean that reading difficult, as it is necessary to constantly re-focus on the next portion of text.
A visual impairment may occur alone or in combination with other conditions. Some people are born with visual impairments or have lived with the disability for a long time and have been taught or developed their own strategies for coping with both the practical difficulties of living and dealing with information usually presented in text form. For those with more residual vision, texts are typically accessed using large print and/or various magnification and lighting aids. Aids can include powerful spectacle lenses, free-standing magnifiers placed on top of a text, often with an integral light source.
A person who is registered or certified blind or partially sighted is automatically regarded as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act (1995). However, even without registration, it is likely that a person with significantly limited vision which is not easily corrected using glasses or contact lenses will be considered disabled under the provisions of the Act.
Impact on testing
Any task where materials are presented visually, whether on paper, computer screen or as objects to be manipulated, will cause difficulty for a visually impaired person. This will include the vast majority of psychometric tests. In order to assess a person with a visual disability, it is likely to be necessary to make adjustments to test administration procedures, use alternative testing materials, or both. However, any changes to a test cannot be made without affecting its reliability and validity.
The standardised nature of psychometric tests is one of the main contributors to their effectiveness and objectivity, and arbitrary modifications to the test or administration procedure are likely to invalidate the results and render standard norm groups and score interpretations meaningless. Some test takers may want to bring along some special equipment or ask for specific lighting conditions.
And finally…
We hope that you enjoy using the test materials in this book, and on the website should you choose to explore it. We are most grateful for any suggestions as how to improve our website, to ensure that we are doing things right: contact us on enquiries@legal-recruit.org, and you should expect to receive a reply within 24-48 hours.
Good luck!
London, December 2011
1st edition
Should young children be subject to passive smoking?
The question about whether young people should be subject to passive smoking (or “second hand smoke” (SHS)) soon resolves an issue of the rights of the child or the responsibilities of the parent. A person may wish to exert autonomy over their desire to have a cigarette, but does his or her child have an overriding right not to be subject of that smoke? As is usual with the law, the judgment crucially deciding upon conflicting interests, and balancing their decisions to make an apt decision. Ethicists have long wondered who exactly confers these rights, how are they defined and on what basis (Hall, 2005)
In fact, it is tempting to believe that UK health policy exists in a total vacuum, when it comes to the outside world. This is in fact not true, because the UK is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Although UN Conventions do not have ‘the force of law’, countries do report at regular intervals to the relevant UN Committee on their progress in implementation. From a legal point, it is noteworthy that the UNCRC does not have the same force as the Human Rights Act, although it is widely quoted in policy documents (Hagger, 2005). The concept of “rights’” cannot change human behaviour, but it “adds an element of accountability and a legal framework that can be used to make governments wake up to their obligations to make things happen’”. (Hall, 2005)
It is therefore nonetheless encouraging that one of that the UK’s leading lung charities seems to be very serious about children and lung health.
One of their election points, in relation to the British Lung Foundation’s “Children’s Charter”, argues the following:
The BLF therefore believes that parents and carers should be given opportunities to learn how to keep young lungs healthy and that children should have the right to enjoy a smoke free environment both inside and outside of the home.
In some ways, this is reminiscent of the NHS Patient Charter, which had its oft-exhausted list of inherent strengths and weaknesses. Christine Farrell has done a very considerabke review of the NHS Charter process (Farrell, 1999). The weaknesses of the Charter were seen by patients and staff as falling within three categories although staff were much more vocal in their criticisms than patients and carers. The problem areas were categorized into three groups:
1. problems with standards and rights;
(From this point of view, it is worth noting therefore the phrasing of “opportunities to learn how…” is not trivial, given the previous problems in how people understand standards and rights. NHS staff and patients have in the past commented on the lack of clarity and the confusion about what was a “standard’ and what was a “right”. This is an issue much discussed in the literature too (Hogg, 1994; Bynoe, 1996).)
2. difficulties with monitoring;
3. patient expectations raised too high.
Smoking, lung disease and policy
A very recent study has looked in fact at the relationship between childhood environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure and the development of subsequent lung disease (Lovasi et al. 2010) Mechanical stress to alveolar walls, the little units which make up our lungs, may cause progressive damage after an early-life insult such as exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. Childhood ETS exposure was assessed retrospectively as a report of living with one or more regular indoor smokers. Childhood ETS exposure was associated with detectable differences on computed tomography scans of adult lungs of nonsmokers.
Indeed, young children who are exposed to tobacco smoke are in general significantly more likely to develop health problems during childhood and in later life. who are exposed to second-hand smoke (Health Care Commission (2006), ATS (1999). Although parental smoking is the commonest source of ETS exposure to children, children are also unfortunately exposed to ETS in schools, restaurants, public places and public transport vehicles.
Apart from containing thousands of chemicals, the particle size in the ETS is much smaller than the main stream smoke, and therefore has a greater penetrability in the airways of children. Exposure to ETS has been shown to be associated with increased prevalence of upper respiratory tract infections, wheeze, asthma and lower respiratory tract infections. Therefore, arguably, an increased awareness of the harmful effects of ETS on children’s health is warranted for formulating health policy overall (Cheraghi and Salvi, 2009). Furthermore, specifically, environmental tobacco smoke exposure carries a number of risks for the developing lung of the fetus, infant and child. (Wallace, 2009)
Despite the recent campaigns to eliminate smoking and hinder the detrimental effects of passive smoking , actual smoking rates still increase worldwide. Several physiological systems, with the respiratory being the primary, are disrupted by PS and progressively deteriorate through chronic exposures. This is of particular importance in children, given that respiratory complications during childhood can be transferred to adulthood, lead to significantly inferior health profiles. (Metsios, Flouris, and Koutedakis 2009).
SHS exposure is a known cause of disease among non-smokers, contributing to lung cancer, heart disease, and sudden infant death syndrome, as well as other diseases. Yet thousands of children remain unprotected from exposure to SHS in private homes and cars. New initiatives targeting SHS in these spaces have raised ethical questions about imposing constraints on private behaviours (Jarvis and Malone, 2008) In the countries where the smoke free legislation was successfully implemented (Ireland, Italy, Scotland) there is evidence of reduced prevalence of the smoking induced diseases, especially acute coronary attacks (Kemp, 2009).
Summary
One would, arguably, want to follow one’s intuitions and to see a society where children’s lungs are not damaged to the actions of their parents or adults generally. However, the whole issue brings up the added problems of whether second-hand smoke or passive smoking does without doubt cause lung problems (is science infallible?) and, as a country, whether we can do anything other than ‘encourage opportunities’ rather than to ‘enforce rights’. It is not an electoral issue, however, and nor is it likely to become one. It might become, on the other hand, a very campaigning issue for charities such as the British Lung Foundation and the British Heart Foundation.
References
Bynoe, I. (1996), Beyond the Citizen’s Charter. New Directions for Social Rights, Institute for Public Policy Research, London.
Cheraghi, M, Salvi, S. Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and respiratory health in children. Eur J Pediatr. 2009 Aug;168(8):897-905. Epub 2009 Mar 20.
Farrell, C. The Patient’s Charter: a tool for quality improvement? International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 12/4 [1999] 129-134
Guyer, B, Ma, S, Grason, H, Frick, KD, Perry, DF, Sharkey, A, McIntosh, J. Early childhood health promotion and its life course health consequences. Acad Pediatr. 2009 May-Jun;9(3):142-149.e1-71.
Hall, DMB. Children, rights, and responsibilities. Arch Dis Child 2005;90:171–173. doi: 10.1136/adc.2004.053017
Health Care Commission report, Clearing the Air 2006
Hogg, C. (1994), Working with Users: Beyond the Patient’s Charter, Health Rights, London.
Jarvis, JA, Malone, RE. Children’s secondhand smoke exposure in private homes and cars: an ethical analysis. Am J Public Health. 2008 Dec;98(12):2140-5. Epub 2008 Oct 15.
Kemp, FB. Smoke free policies in Europe. An overview. Pneumologia. 2009 Jul-Sep;58(3):155-8.
Lovasi, GS, Diez Doux AV, Hoffman, EA, Kawut, SM, Jacobs, DR Jnr., Barr, RG. Association of environmental tobacco smoke exposure in childhood with early emphysema in adulthood among nonsmokers: the MESA-lung study. Am J Epidemiol. 2010 Jan 1;171(1):54-62. Epub 2009 Nov 25.
Metselos, GS, Flouris, AD, Koutedakis, Y. Passive smoking, asthma and allergy in children. Inflamm Allergy Drug Targets. 2009 Dec;8(5):348-52.
The American Thoracic Society (1999) Pulmonary rehabilitation, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
Wallace, J, The respiratory effects of tobacco smoke exposure on the fetus and child. S D Med. 2009;Spec No:11-2.
Guest blog by @jlocke13: Can murder ever be a 'necessity'?
Guest article by Prof John Locke
In U.S. criminal law, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. America’s abortion debate was ignited again yesterday after a judge was asked to allow the man who killed an abortion doctor in front of 250 people to make a ‘necessity defence’ in court. Judge Warren Wilbert refused to allow the defence to present a plea of necessity, but did allow them to present a case for voluntary manslaughter on the grounds that the defendant sincerely believed that he was committing a crime to prevent a greater evil.
Anti-abortionist Scott Roeder will have been allowed to testify that he believed he was saving unborn children when he gunned down Dr George Tiller in a Kansas church last May, Judge Warren Wilbert ruled yesterday. Roeder, who has confessed to the killing, is charged with first-degree murder in the Kansas trial. But Wilbert recently had decided he would allow the 51-year-old to build a defence calling for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. Kansas law defines voluntary manslaughter as ‘an unreasonable but honest belief’ that there were circumstances to justify deadly force.
Pleading such a case could bring a prison sentence closer to five years, instead of a life term for first-degree murder. Wilbert said that until Roeder’s team decides which evidence it will present, he cannot rule out his proposed defence claim. The prosecution argued this week that such a defence should not be considered because there is no evidence Tiller posed an imminent threat at the time of the killing.
A voluntary manslaughter-based argument would essentially ‘enable a defendant to justify premeditated murder because of an emotionally charged political belief,’ the prosecution wrote.
But the defence hit back , arguing that in Roeder’s mind, there was an imminence of danger because Dr Tiller’s Wichita clinic was performing abortions. ‘It had staff. It had a practitioner. It had a budget. It had clientele. … In the mind of Mr. Roeder, the victim presented a clear danger to unborn children,’ the defence wrote.
While again turning aside the prosecution argument, Wilbert warned that the defence had a difficult task and he would ‘make every effort to try this case as a criminal first-degree murder trial.’ The judge said he would rule on a witness-by-witness, question-by-question basis on whether to allow jurors to hear specific evidence on what Roeder’s beliefs were at the time of the shooting.
The facts of the case are not in dispute. On May 31, Roeder got up from a pew at Wichita’s Reformation Lutheran Church at the start of services and walked to the foyer, where Tiller and a fellow usher were chatting. He put the barrel of a .22-caliber handgun to Tiller’s forehead and pulled the trigger. This recent ruling therefore changed what had been expected to be a simple case – with the defendant’s confession and more than 250 possible witnesses for the prosecution – and galvanized both sides of the abortion debate.
Preface to Book 1 by Legal Recruit : verbal reasoning tests
Book 1 “300 online verbal reasoning questions for law firm applications” has now been published. This Book is a companion to a brand new innovative website, Legal Recruit, designed to boost the chances of law students applying for training contracts and vacation placements pursuant to online psychometric testing. Legal Recruit is an independent project of mine, and aligns with my ambition to make legal education, training and opportunities fair for students with disabilities. The platform offers features for students with visual impairments and/or reading difficulties. The Preface to the book is reproduced below.
The ‘Legal Recruit’ website (http://www.legal-recruit.org) is a brand new platform where students can practice online verbal reasoning tests of the ‘True’, ‘False’ or ‘Cannot Say’ variety. These tests are routinely used by the majority of corporate law firms in preliminary assessment of suitability for training contracts or vacation placement schemes. These tests are also used by other corporates. None of the test materials used by ‘Legal Recruit’ require any prior knowledge; in fact prior knowledge is considered to be a disadvantage, as the tests are pure assessments of verbal reasoning ability.
You should be told how you are supposed to do your online verbal reasoning test by your chosen law firm. For example, you may be required to do an ‘online’ version before doing a ‘real life’ version in an assessment centre, with your chosen law firm. That law firm is then responsible for providing you details about when, where and how your assessment day will occur.
Psychological assessments can be partly used to assess the suitability of law students for a corporate law job. Intelligent recruiters will however not base their decision to invite you for interview on them solely, and they will often freely admit to this if or when you meet them. Any assessments are supposed to be developed using some very technical and complex procedures in order to ensure that they really do measure what they claim to measure and that they do so with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
LegalRecruit offers an extensive range of sample questions, of balanced sentence length, subject variety, and complexity of language. Although it has in mind GDL and LPC students applying for training contracts or vacation placements, the tests do not assess actual legal knowledge. While verbal reasoning tests vary somewhat, the verbal reasoning test on the Legal Recruit platform involve questions of the ‘TRUE’, ‘FALSE’ or ‘CANNOT SAY’ variety often experienced by law students as applicants. You can actually take a full-length verbal reasoning test, and immediately on its completion you will get a free, confidential report providing a total mark as well as an item-by-item breakdown. The situational judgement tests, while often referring to corporate law scenarios for trainees, test important competences for all trainees in corporate ifrms. Legal Recruit has a number of resources which will help you improve in your performance on online psychometric tests, or help to demystify what they are about. The platform also allows to practice online verbal reasoning tests and situational judgement tests.
Useful pages
Online tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/psychometric-testing/
Competences : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/competencies/
Verbal reasoning tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/verbal-reasoning-test/
Situational judgement tests : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/situational-judgement-test/
Vision or reading difficulties : http://legal-recruit.org/about-the-tests/disabilities/
Assessments on the ‘Legal Recruit’ website have exactly the same format, and consist of 30 questions, containing 15 passages (2 questions per passage). The 15 passages will be selected at random from a huge database consisting of an equal number of questions in the following 15 subject areas. These subject areas are biology, business, economics, education, engineering, environment, geography, geology, health and safety, human resources, medicine, modern languages, physics, technology, and transport. The passages are written in plain English of reasonable sentence length, and are all around 130 words in length. No prior nowledge is desirable or advantageous in answering the verbal reasoning tests; these tests are pure tests of verbal reasoning, so prior knowledge can even be a disadvantage! All the questions and passages are unique to us; we have absolutely no knowledge of the questions used by the actual common test providers.
It is vital for you to know ‘how to play the system’, what your motivation in applying for certain types of firms. The gateway to the psychometric test is normally the application form (both online). It’s worth speaking to the Careers Unit in your law school about how to tackle the application form. The online application form contains lots of subtle points, and it may be worth being aware of them before you fill it in, e.g. http://legal-aware.org/2011/07/law-careers-how-to-write-a-good-training-contract-application-form/
Corporate law firms often look for relevant work experience, evidence of key competences on the application form, and a reasonable degree (usually II.1 or higher). The vast majority of these firms will make you do some sort of psychometric assessment, whatever your actual proven academic ability. You should consider carefully whether the corporate firm where you want to apply takes such tests seriously, and consider whether you wish to apply there. If you do, it is worth getting good at them, as often they will look at the results before considering whether to invite you to interview or not. Psychological assessments vary, and not all are indeed accreditated by the British Psychological Society (BPS). The BPS upholds standards in psychological assessments, and it is well worth looking at their website, which contains a range of useful advice and guidelines (http://www.psychtesting.org.uk/).
It is claimed by recruiters that performance on such tests mirror your ability to do the job; whether this is actually true or not is an intense area of debate, but ensure that you know how best to come across in their specific recruitment process. It might be worth seeing if you can obtain a one-to-one with the careers advisor in your law school, who will be able to steer you through the complexities of the online application form, to online assessments and interviews. If you have special requirements, make sure the employer understands these as early as possible. Make sure you understand what assessments you will be taking, and what they will tell the employer about your fitness to do the actual job or perform the role. Prepare yourself fully using any examples of assessments on the recruitment part of their website.
Doing the actual test
During the actual assessment, you should read all the instructions and questions carefully. Attempt carefully the practice questions until you get them all right. In fact, you will not be able to progress onto the main online LegalRecruit verbal reasoning test. Your level of familiarity with the testing format is considered to be a factor in your ultimate level of success. Work through the test quickly and accurately (noting carefully though if there is a time limit; often situational judgement tests, unlike verbal reasoning tests, are actually untimed). Make sure that you record answers in the correct way as advised in the instructions for the assessment. You should pay particular attention as to whether you can go ‘back’ between questions in the actual test; sometimes when you ‘record’ your answer, you can’t actually go back at some later stage to change your answer.
Most online psychological assessments are designed to be carried out in a formal and standard manner. You should ensure “the basics”, for example, that the room is comfortable, well lit, nicely ventilated, and ‘free from interruptions’. Such ‘standardisation’ ensures that everyone who takes the test is given the same information and the same opportunities. It is argued that the results of the test can be used to place individuals in order of ability, to indicate individual qualities in relation to the entire group of applicants.
Verbal reasoning tests are usually timed. Our ones are meant to take 20 minutes to do 30 questions, although you can do the test in up to 39 minutes, if you need ‘extra time’ because of ‘reasonable adjustments’. In these tests the emphasis is on how many questions you can get right, rather than on how quickly you work. This is important when you consider what ‘output measure’ the law firm will actually receive about your test performance. Employers have a duty to make “reasonable adjustments” to selection processes and working conditions so that disabled persons are not placed at a substantial disadvantage.
In controlled administration, you are provided with restricted access to the test session, but the administration is carried out without someone being present to supervise it. This mode is commonly used for typical performance tests administered over the Internet, as you might be expected to do in applying for a corporate law firm. When the software has been well designed, the software should cover all the questions and issues that are normally dealt with by a test administrator. In other words, your performance on the test should not be dependent in any way on the quality of your internet connection, or the sophistication of the browser on your computer.
It could be that you are not actually ever told the results of the tests, or how they are calculated. In the Legal Recruit online verbal reasoning tests, you will simply get a mark every time you answer a question correctly, and you will also be given an indication of how you perform in relation to your peer group. Your results on the Legal Recruit are held in a private and confidential way (your test provider actually has legal obligations under the Data Protection Act), such that only you know them, through your account information (username and password).
What can I do to practice beforehand?
Most test publishers provide practice materials that are similar in form and content to the actual tests. You should be notified well in advance of the test session as to whether practice materials are available. For some online tests, you are likely to be exposed to the practice questions shortly before you do the actual test, and you may be able to time the actual test after you had proper time to consider the practice questions. This depends on the competence of the recruitment department of your corporate law firm.
The British Psychological Society’s Code of Good Practice for Psychological Testing states that:
‘People who use psychological assessments are expected by the British Psychological Society to: Ensure that all test takers are well informed and well prepared for the test session, and that all have had access to practice or familiarization materials where appropriate.’
If you are taking a test, and the tester sends out practice materials as recommended by best practice guidelines, you should have a look at these sample materials very carefully. Do not just check to see that you have the correct answer to the practice questions, but ask yourself ‘Why is this the correct answer and how did I work that out?’ The practice materials are developed to give the candidate familiarity with the kinds of thinking that they will have to use in the testing session so this will be time well spent.
What are verbal reasoning tests?
Verbal reasoning tests are a common hurdle to being invited to interview. Why do employers use verbal reasoning tests? Put simply: because they are felt to be better at predicting job performance than interviews, CVs and personality questionnaires. It is not entirely clear what the evidence base for this is. Cognitive neuropsychologists are aware that such tasks are complex, in that there are many reasons why a learner could do badly at them.
Most corporate legal recruiters use an online form of the verbal reasoning test now. This works very well for the pre-selection stage, after the initial application form, before the assessment centre stage. Candidates are asked to login to an online testing environment, and sit an unsupervised test via a computer.
If the employer likes your application and you score well in your online test they will may or may not invite you in for an interview and another test but this time supervised. For online verbal reasoning tests, it is even more important to practice, since this will allow you to become familiar with the test interface and test style. If you are familiar with the types of test you have to face, you are more likely to perform your best and maximise your chances of success. It is now considered too, apparently from a vast body of research, that one of the critical determinants of success is the extent to which you’re expecting to do well!
Designing the tests is extremely important
In the case of the verbal reasoning test, a number of factors could cause poor performance, for example poor vision or poor environmental factors generally. A large number of these factors are undoubtedly neurocognitive, and could be due to poor attention (e.g. impulsivity, distractibility), poor learning and memory, poor semantic knowledge, poor reading ability (e.g. dyslexia), for example, and the demanding challenge for cognitive neuropsychologists is to make these tests as ‘pure’ a test of verbal reasoning as possible (for example, by controlling for other factors on a case-by-case basis). Please note that SHL emphasise the need for each case to be considered on an individual basis, if the situation should necessitate it, and the legal recruiter will critically have to know their obligations in this relationship.
Industry reviews are now largely based on the European standard set by EFPA, the European Federation of Psychologists’ Association. There is no requirement for tests to be reviewed, but most publishers are keen to have their materials independently appraised in this way. Leading test providers have in the past few years made significant changes and improvement to their instruments and are in the process of preparing the information needed for new reviews in the area of ability testing.
Format of the standard verbal reasoning test
In a verbal reasoning test, you are usually provided with a passage of information and required to evaluate a set of statements by selecting one of the following possible answers:
A – True (The statement follows logically from the information or opinions contained in the passage)
B – False (The statement is logically false from the information or opinions contained in the passage)
C – Cannot Say (Cannot determine whether the statement is true or false without further information)
In the example below, give your answer to each question by clicking on either A, B or C. You will be told whether your answer is correct or not.
Passage:
Over 60 years ago, evolutionary biologist Bernhard Rensch calculated that males are typically the larger sex in big-bodied species such as humans, whereas females outdo them in small-bodied species such as spiders. Now it turns out that many plants obey Rensch’s rule too. Most plants produce both male and female sex organs, but around 7 percent are dioecious, meaning individuals are purely male or female. Recent results provide that female stems also must be large enough to display the fruit and support the animals that spread the pollen or seeds. If metabolism, predators or climate promote the evolution of smaller plants, however, males can shrink because their gametes are smaller.
The questions might be as follows.
1. Over 80 years ago, Bernard Rensch calculated that males are typically the larger sex in big-bodied species.
CANNOT SAY – the passage says that Bernard Rensch calculated this over 60 years ago, but it is not possible to say from the passage whether he calculated this over 80 years ago.
2. Around 7% of plants are dioecious, but it is not necessary for female stems to be large enough to display the fruit.
FALSE – whilst the first part of the statement is true according to the passage, the second part of the statement is clearly false, making the entire statement false.
So what’s the best way to prepare for your verbal reasoning test?
You are advised to practice any available good-quality example questions, and any books you can get your hands on with similar questions, and read our advice here. If you prepare properly for your test you will have nothing to worry about. Being prepared and knowing what to expect in your verbal reasoning test will go a long way to helping you perform your best. These verbal reasoning tests used by employers in their selection process aim to measure your ability to read, comprehend and interpret written information. Verbal reasoning tests are designed to test your powers of comprehension and logic.
You will be tested on whether you jump to conclusions or you appreciate the limitations of a statement. If a passage says “it has been reported…” it does not follow that the fact is necessarily true, only that it has been reported. Another classic example is: “if the lights in a house come on, does that mean there is someone inside the building?” Not necessarily.
“If A is bigger than B, does that mean B is small?” Not necessarily. You will be tested to sort fact from inference, a lot like what’s required in a real work environment. You can therefore see why lawyers almost always have to pass a verbal reasoning test.
Through practice, you will develop your own technique for answering verbal reasoning questions to the best of your ability, however for most people the best way to approach them is to read the entire passage through once, then turn to the questions. Read the first statement and refer back to the relevant part of the passage to carefully consider if the statement is true, false, or impossible to determine without further information. It will often come down to just one or two sentences within the passage.
You should have an idea of how much time to allow yourself for each question and know when to move on. Concentration is essential, especially when every second counts. Base your answers on only the information contained in the passage. This is crucial, and if you don’t do this you will probably get a lot of the questions wrong. Verbal reasoning tests are not tests of what you know, they are tests of how well you understand written information.
Furthermore, on the Legal Recruit website, you can change the text size if you have any visual impairment; you can also choose to have ‘extra time’ for the test, if you need a reasonable adjustment for a relevant condition such as dyslexia.
How are individuals with disabilities treated?
The British Psychological Society’s Code of Good Practice for Psychological Testing states clearly that:
‘People who use psychological assessments in settings are expected by the British Psychological Society to: Give due consideration to factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, disability and special needs, educational background and level of ability in using and interpreting the results of tests.’
If you or your dependant has a disability and feel that you may need special conditions, it is important that this is brought to the notice of the person responsible for the testing as soon as the testing session has been arranged. This will give maximum time for the assessor to check what special requirements can be provided and what arrangements can be made
Reading difficulty (dyslexia)
Dyslexia can be a legally recognised disability depending on its severity. Therefore, when applicants or candidates are being assessed, the qualified test user should have due regard to the employment provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) or Equality Act (2010); this makes it unlawful for an employer to treat a disabled person less favourably than a non-disabled person without good reason. Discrimination is outlawed in a wide range of employment activities including selection, promotion and training.
The British Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as:
‘A combination of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling and writing. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills. It is particularly related to mastering and using written language, which may include alphabetic, numeric and musical notation.’
In selection for a training contract or vacation placement, an individual with dyslexia In is likely to encounter difficulty with tests of verbal reasoning, spelling and functional literacy. The law requires that accommodations are made for disabled people including those with dyslexia to ensure that selection procedures do not disadvantage them. The employer is concerned with eliciting accurate information on abilities to use in making decisions.
The standardised nature of these tests is one of the main contributors to their effectiveness and objectivity. Arbitrary modifications to the test or administration procedure are likely to invalidate the results and render standard norm groups and score interpretations meaningless. A common modification for individuals with dyslexia is to adjust the timing of the test. However, the amount of extra time required will depend on the way the dyslexia manifests itself, its severity, the test(s) being used and their relationship to the job requirements. Only a relevant professional can determine what is appropriate. Whether adjustments have been made to standard test procedures or not, careful administration can help ensure that individuals with dyslexia have a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills.
As with many disabilities, stress may exacerbate the impact of dyslexia. Therefore, a calm and understanding approach on the part of the administrator is important. People with dyslexia may have difficulty with test instructions. This can be due to reading difficulties, or to a difficulty with short-term memory and/or sequencing which is common with dyslexia.
Visual impairments and the law
Visual impairment covers a wide range of conditions. Even a person who is registered blind may have some residual vision, e.g. the ability to discern light from dark or even quite good acuity within a severely limited field of vision. Partial sight also covers many different types of conditions. These can range from very blurred vision to loss of some areas of the field of vision. For some people the act of focusing can be difficult, this can mean that reading difficult, as it is necessary to constantly re-focus on the next portion of text.
A visual impairment may occur alone or in combination with other conditions. Some people are born with visual impairments or have lived with the disability for a long time and have been taught or developed their own strategies for coping with both the practical difficulties of living and dealing with information usually presented in text form. For those with more residual vision, texts are typically accessed using large print and/or various magnification and lighting aids. Aids can include powerful spectacle lenses, free-standing magnifiers placed on top of a text, often with an integral light source.
A person who is registered or certified blind or partially sighted is automatically regarded as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act (1995). However, even without registration, it is likely that a person with significantly limited vision which is not easily corrected using glasses or contact lenses will be considered disabled under the provisions of the Act.
Impact on testing
Any task where materials are presented visually, whether on paper, computer screen or as objects to be manipulated, will cause difficulty for a visually impaired person. This will include the vast majority of psychometric tests.
In order to assess a person with a visual disability, it is likely to be necessary to make adjustments to test administration procedures, use alternative testing materials, or both. However, any changes to a test cannot be made without affecting its reliability and validity.
The standardised nature of psychometric tests is one of the main contributors to their effectiveness and objectivity, and arbitrary modifications to the test or administration procedure are likely to invalidate the results and render standard norm groups and score interpretations meaningless. Some test takers may want to bring along some special equipment or ask for specific lighting conditions.
And finally…
We hope that you enjoy using the test materials in this book, and on the website should you choose to explore it. We are most grateful for any suggestions as how to improve our website, to ensure that we are doing things right: contact us on enquiries@legal-recruit.org, and you should expect to receive a reply within 24-48 hours.
Good luck!
London, December 2011
1st edition
Neuroscience and the law: the current insanity of the insanity law in England
While we wait even longer for the English Law Commission to deliberate on the future of the insanity defense, it is worth noting that events have supersed my last blog. Two years ago, a “devoted husband” who said he killed his wife because he thought she was an intruder has been freed by a judge, who told him he bore no responsibility (the news item dated 20 November 2009 is on the BBC website here).
Brian Thomas, 59, admitted killing Christine, 57, in their camper van, but blamed his rare sleep disorder. The judge told the jury to declare Mr Thomas, of Neath, not guilty over the death in Aberporth, Ceredigion in 2008.
The case involved automatism as a cause of ‘insanity’. Automatism is essentially a legal defense, arguing that a person cannot be held responsible for their actions because they had no conscious knowledge of them. It is a legal defense in the sense that the correlates of what is happening in the brain are poorly understood, therefore leaving psychiatrists with some difficulty in providing evidence on it for thecourts.
They drew attention to the fact that the present law derives from a work written in 1797. The current test uses out-of-date language (the accused has to be suffering from ‘a complete alienation of reason’). This terminology cannot be easily understood by persons who have to apply it, such as psychiatric experts or jurors. Clearly, this definition does take into account the rapid advances in cognitive neuroscience, nor in legal academia about the nature of responsibility.
The Scottish Law Commission further argued that the reformed defense should require the presence of a mental disorder suffered by the accused at the time of the alleged offence. The existence (or non-existence) of a mental disorder in a particular case would normally be a matter for expert, psychiatric evidence. The core element of the defense should be that, by reason of a mental disorder at the relevant time, the accused was unable to appreciate the nature or wrongfulness of his or her conduct. Now the hard part! What would the defendant or his lawyer need to prove that this was the case at the time?
The problem is obviously the defendant can be made subject to all sorts of complicated tests. For example, it is known that many legal diagnoses of insanity actually correspond to a diagnosis of psychosis or schizophrenia. However, for such patients, an electroencephalogram or MRI (advanced brain scan) can be normal. And what about proving that the defendant suffers from some abnormality in moral thinking? The group led by Josh Greene at Harvard has only just begun to develop such tests, and to find out how the brain processes moral behaviour. Or could it be a problem with impulse control? Or could it be that the defendant simply has no idea about his own mental state, what the neuropsychiatrists called “anosognosia”?
The upshot is that the law is ripe for reform. People, however, disagree how. One valid view is that the defense of insanity should be simply abolished. Abolition of the defense has been considered in academic literature for some time. Furthermore as a reaction to the Hinckley case in 1982 some states in the USA enacted measures to abolish the insanity defense.
There is now the added issue of how the English law can be reconciled with European law. Article 5(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights provides for a general right to liberty and security of a person and states that no one “shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law.” One of the specified cases is in paragraph (e) of that article which provides for “the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrant.”
A fascinating legal journey has now begun, and at present the destination is unclear. Watch this space!
@legalaware has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology from the University of Cambridge and a LL.M. in international legal practice from the College of Law. The events reported here are true to the best of the knowledge of the author, according to published reports currently available.
Free will, neuroscience and the law
I very much welcome the document by the Royal Society on ‘Neuroscience and the law’. In a short series of articles, I consider the scope for synthesis in these disciplines.
The crux of the legal mens rea in many situations is an intention to act. Neuropsychological theories have offered a number of different theories mostly involving the frontal lobes, how this intention to act based on a decision takes place. One influential theory by Norman and Shallice (1986) proposed a computational model of the selection of routine actions based on competitive activation within a hierarchically organised network of action schemas. An explanation of an “intention to act” depends on a thorough analysis of the question of whether we possess “free will” requires that we take into account the process of exercising that will: the cognitive neuroscience of decision-making. Decision making, which reflects a tendency to think about the consequences of a planned act before engaging in that act.
In another view of how the mind and body might achieve decision-making, Damasio’s “somatic marker hypothesis” provides that, during the pondering of a decision, somatic states are triggered by primary or secondary inducers. Once induced, they participate in two functions. In one they provide a substrate for feeling the induced state. In the other they provide a substrate for influencing or biasing decisions. Most intriguing is that the presence of these somatic states and their influence on decision making and behavior need not be conscious. So while both conscious and unconscious knowledge are contributing to the process of choice, the fact that the generation of somatic states can guide us toward beneficial behaviors without any input from our conscious deliberations indicates that much behavior that seems to be “free will” may be determined by the routine operation of a healthy neural mechanism.
Within this framework, it is entirely possible that impulse control reflects inhibition of a pre-potent act (motor impulse control), or a pre-potent mental image/thought (attentional impulse control). The critical neural region for the mechanism of motor impulse control is the more posterior region of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, i.e. that involving the anterior cingulate (2,3,4). The critical neural region for the mechanism of attentional impulse control is the lateral orbitofrontal and dorsolateral (inferior frontal gyrus) region (2,3,4). However, decision-making research is a double-edged sword in a conversation about rehabilitation. One the one hand, a deterministic view of the choice process seems to undermine the very idea of rehabilitation. On the other, the more we understand the brain, the greater our ability to design interventions that make the possibility of rehabilitation real for many whom the law writes off today.
Whilst it can be argued that “determined” and “inevitable” are not synonymous, it has been of interest whether abnormalities in free will are something that select individuals are born with. An interesting example of variations in genes that promote abnormal responses to fear inducing behaviors is that of Williams syndrome, a condition that has been recognized for very many years. (5) Aside from the striking physical features of this disorder—short stature, malformation of the heart, and distinctive facial markings— Williams children also possess unusual cognitive and behavioral capacities. They have IQs in the range of 40–100, yet frequently show normal linguistic competence, a heightened ability to recognize faces, and a profound love of music, sound and rhythm. The personality of children afflicted with Williams syndrome is not usual. They tend to be hypersocial, which may be caused in part by their heightened ability to recognize faces. This is a moot point. More significant than hypersociability, these children generally lack approach inhibition, a feature that is present in normal children and adults to varying degrees. Children with Williams Syndrome seem unable to differentiate between those who have kind and friendly intentions towards them and those who harbor evil intentions. This is comprehensively reviewed elsewhere. (6)
Moreover, there exist conditions, for example certain types of brain injury or long-term drug substance misuse, in which an individual can be said to have a disorder of the will. Examples such as these demonstrate that the idea of freedom of will on which our legal system is based is not supported by the neuroscience of decision making. The question of whether the average person who becomes involved with the legal system has ‘normal’ free will therefore becomes a highly relevant question. Though it is by no means true that all people who commit crimes are substance dependent or mentally ill, the fact that substance abuse and mental illness plays a role in the behavior of a large percentage. According to the UK Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, approximately 70% of prisoners have either a psychosis, a neurosis, a personality disorder, or a substance misuse problem. (7)
On the other hand, other cases of impaired free will exist in neurological conditions exist that result in people essentially ignoring experiences of punishment (8). That the cognitive profile of violent offenders is so similar to that of patients with just these conditions makes us wonder how, whether and to what degree punishment is working as a deterrent with any particular person.
References
(1) Cooper, R, T Shallice. (2000) Contention scheduling and the control of routine activities. Cognitive Neuropsychology 17 (4), 297–338
(2) Bechara, A. (2003). Risky business: Emotion, decision-making and addiction. Journal of Gambling Studies, 19(1), 23–51.
(3) Bechara, A. (2004). Separate neural substrates underlie different mechanisms of performance monitoring and behavioral control. In M. Ullsperger, & M. Falkenstein (Eds.), Errors, conflicts, and the brain: Current opinions on performance monitoring (pp. 55–63). Dortmund: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig.-Munchen.
(4) Bechara, A., & Damasio, A. R. (2005). The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision. Games and Economic Behavior, 52(2), 336–372.
(5) Albert Galaburda et al. (2001) Dorsal Forebrain Anomaly in Williams Syndrome, 58 Arch Neurol. 1865–1869. See also Allan L. Reiss et al., Brain Imaging in Neurogenetic Conditions: Realizing the Potential of Behavioral Neurogenetics Research, 6 Mental retardation. Developmental Disabilities Research Nev. 186–197 (2000).
Much of what we know about these mechanisms indicates that decision making is greatly influenced by implicit processes that may not even reach consciousness.
(6) The neuroscience of free will. Laurence Tancredi. Behavioral Sciences and the Law Behav. Sci. Law 25: 295–308 (2007)
(7) From the Inside Experiences of prison mental health care Graham Durcan. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.
(8) Decision Making and Free Will: a Neuroscience Perspective. Kelly Burns and Antoine Bechara.Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Behav. Sci. Law 25: 263–280 (2007)
@legalaware has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology from the University of Cambridge and a LL.M. in international legal practice from the College of Law.
Writing a blog or tweeting can damage your career health
It is completely false that anyone has achieved a training contract on the basis of a blog. Furthermore, I am not aware of anyone who has made such a bold proposal, and I am reasonably clued in about Twitter and other social media daily. The requirements for getting an interview, including good grades, relevant work experience, psychometric testing, answers to pre-screening questions, are so exacting as to make such an accusation absurd. I was once lucky enough to be interviewed for a Magic Circle training contract, where they had invited only 200 out of their 5000 applicants roughly.
I don’t do my blog to enhance my employability. I enjoy interacting with law students, journalists, barristers, solicitors and like-minded people, and I tend to follow people who are following me, so it’s a proper open dialogue. It happens that some of the people who follow me are law firms, but not in a way that means that I am obliged to tweet their stuff. I follow @barstandards and @sra_solicitors, and they follow me back, and it’s good for me to get tabs on the professional requirements of the law in general, and to spread the word around. I will be starting the LPC in January 2012 at BPP, but I do not overly plug BPP on my thread, especially given I loved my LLM at @CollegeofLaw.
In fact, I have to tread very carefully, as my views are not representative of the corporate entity of which I am a part, albeit as a student. My thread is the official student thread of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, run by BPP students for BPP students, and is an official society, but I have to be very careful to ensure that my views are not construed as at all representing BPP. This has to be understood when I tweet about contentious issues such as legal aid or alternative business structures. I have clear disclaimers on my site to ensure that people ‘play by the rules’ (as far as possible). On that rare occasion when I did go a #legal #tweetup last May (2010), I had an interesting chat with a ‘real’ corporate blogger about the identity one assumes when blogging affiliated loosely to an entity. At least I am a student, so I enjoy free speech. I find Twitter cliquey, and regularly find myself not in ‘in the in crowd’. However, I persevere, as I have enjoyed writing about legal news, discussing legal education, and even uploading my educational videos (which are not official BPP teachings). Latterly, I became interested in psychometric testing, given my own postgraduate background in Cambridge in experimental psychology, but again I have to ensure I
don’t tread on any corporate “toes” in this regard.
I think, in fact, blogging and tweeting can seriously damage your health. A lot can go wrong in a blog article, and within 140 characters. I also doubt very much there are any legal recruiters who play close attention to what we do, unless what we say advances a debate of substance, such as Adam Wagner on human rights, David Allen Green on law and policy, @ilegal on legal aid, @lawandsexuality or @BexHuxBinns on legal education. That’s part of the fun for it for me. I doubt I will even apply for a training contract next year, but I have a ‘best before’ date of ten years after completion of my GDL. I am not overly panicky given I am 37, and survived two months in a coma due to meningitis in 2007 and consequently disabled, but I would like to be admitted to the Roll of Solicitors eventually. It’s a privilege to be a solicitor, and I hope that day will come. However, my suitability to be a corporate ‘bum on seat’ is like the appeal of my blogs or tweets- the people who like it will like it, the people who hate it will hate it, and they’ll always be people who don’t fall easily into either camp.
I like what I do with ‘legal aware’ and ‘legal recruit‘, and popularity for it doesn’t matter to me any more. I am never in any blog reviews, and I simply don’t care for that either (small violins time..)
Final meeting of the BPP Legal Awareness Society this year: Unlocking disputes
Information about the BPP Legal Awareness Society is found on the official BPP students website here.
Thanks of all to John Woodley, MBA Programme Director and University College Lecturer in accounting, for organising all of our meetings this term.
Our final meeting at 3 pm – 4 pm BPP Business School is on dispute resolution, room L2.
I will presenting on the critical importance of the City in dispute resolution.
You can view the presentation Unlocking disputes.
I will be referring to the official ‘Unlocking disputes‘ campaign website during the course of my presentation.
We will also be presenting the BPP Legal Awareness Society educational video on international arbitration.
Please note that none of this constitutes any official teaching by BPP. The Legal Awareness Society is run entirely by BPP students for students. We welcome current or future students at our meetings currently held at the BPP Business School, 2 St Mary Axe. Please note, however, that the BPP Legal Awareness Society will be held at the BPP Law School, Holborn.
