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Brand new free practice psychometric test worked examples for training contract applications
Pro bono publico is an important strand of many lawyers’ output.
That is why our student society based at BPP is distributing for free this book containing 150 worked examples of psychometric test questions. These questions test verbal reasoning using short passages, and require respondents to decide whether given statements are true or false, or they simply cannot say from the information given. These worked examples are all totally original, and the intellectual property of ‘Legal Recruit’.
These questions are carefully designed to test common competences in verbal reasoning questions. The passages are across a broad range of subjects, ranging from biology to transport. The passages are all of roughly the same length (120 – 140 words).
We should like to stress, as usual, that this product is produced by students at BPP, but otherwise nothing to do with BPP. It is certainly not provided in any capacity by BPP, and students should use the material supplied entirely voluntarily. We have nothing to do with the official Careers Service of any of the teaching sites of BPP Law School. This document (below) is not endorsed by anyone at BPP.
We do not have any test providers in mind when we provide these worked examples, as we hope that the skills you develop in answering them can be transferred to whatever test you do for real. However, it’s advisable to phone up the graduate recruitment team (or email them), to enquire about where (if anywhere) a similar test appears in their application process for a training contract. It could be required at roughly the time of submission of the online application form, or could feature during the ‘assessment day’ (if relevant).
Terms and conditions Please do not distribute this material without permission or acknowledgement, and any sale of this material for commercial gain is strictly prohibited. You may tweet me on @legalaware if you wish to use this material in a specific context, but otherwise the worked examples are provided for personal use. I would be especially interested if you disagree with any of the answers, and I’ll happily consider your argument (and amend the manuscript if necessary.)
Scenarios are based on real news stories which are freely available at the time of writing, but any misrepresentation or similar is completely unintentional. We should be happy to amend any material, if alerted accordingly.
Anyway, on a positive note, I hope that you enjoy using these resources in addition to your usual GDL, LPC, LLB(Hons) or LLM learning materials, and that you approach training contract applications for City firms with due confidence.
To download the free 87-page document containing brand new 150 worked examples, please click here. By clicking, you are deemed to have agreed to the terms and conditions provided above.
Enjoy!
Images of samples from this new book
Handout for this evening's meeting on psychometric tests
In the meeting it was made very clear that ‘Legal Recruit’ is a platform with plenty of free material including factsheets, a book, a practice verbal reasoning test and videos, and is entirely independent of BPP. Current members of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, one of the most popular societies at BPP, were pleased to learn about this initiative which had grown entirely out of the activities of students within the Society. It is not a BPP product.
In this handout (download Presentation on the online verbal reasoning test), you’ll see numerous worked examples. Try to work out for yourself, before you ‘reveal’ the answers, why the statements are either ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘cannot say’. They are not real or actual SHL questions, but the format and style of the questions are similar to what you might see in a real online verbal reasoning test as provided by SHL on behalf of a number of legal recruitment departments. However, these questions and answers provided cannot be taken as any official training for these tests, and should be used entirely voluntarily by students on a personal basis. They are copyright of the BPP Legal Awareness Society.
A new way to do practice online psychometric tests by law students for legal recruitment
Launched in 2011, ‘Legal Recruit’ is an innovative, totally independent, platform for law students to practice online psychometric tests. These tests are routinely provided by SHL Direct and Kenexa to assist in the recruitment of suitable trainees for training contracts and vacation placements in City law firms. ‘Legal Recruit’ only contains unique, original learning material, not available from any learning provider.
This platform therefore will be ideal for any student who needs to complete a psychometric test for his or her own application. It’s usually expected that a candidate scores in a high percentile, and often firms will not call students who do not meet a minimum standard of performance. On the ‘Legal Recruit’, learners receive an immediate report on their performance, included a detailed breakdown of where they did well on individual items and where they got the answer wrong.
The platform offers students a chance to do 15 full-length verbal reasoning tests and 4 situational judgement tests, for £10. However, there is much free material on the site, including a chance to do a practice online verbal reasoning test for free. 76 graduates have so far taken the test and the average score is 21.61. There are lots of free factsheets, including an introduction to psychometric tests, an introduction to verbal reasoning tests, an introduction to situational judgement tests, visual impairments and reading difficulties, how to write a cover sheet, and how to complete the online application form, and lots of exclusive videos too. We hope to launch a numerical reasoning part of the website shortly.
We were very happy when, last month, the ‘Legal Recruit’ was chosen by the Queen Mary and Westfield College (University of London) Law Students’ Union mock ‘assessment day’, for practice by their law students in verbal reasoning and situational judgement tests. This is excellent co-operation between two active law student groups.
The feedback for ‘Legal Recruit’ has been extremely promising, including from current trainees and law students. There is a free book of 150 verbal reasoning questions that anyone can download for free, also containing original unique specimen test material, and 2 books for comprehensive practice at verbal reasoning and situational judgement tests, priced extremely competitively at £7.5o each.
The link to Legal Recruit is here.
It is important to note that, whilst the website is entirely the intellectual property of ‘Legal Recruit’ (an initiative by students in the BPP Legal Awareness Society run by BPP students for BPP students), this project including product is absolutely nothing o do with BPP. The BPP Legal Awareness Society strives to explain the competitive advantage of businesses through law, and to explain compliance with the law in achieving business strategy.
The online application form for vacation placements and training contracts
A list of questions below were based on the current questions being used by the following firms on their online application forms: Ashford, Baker & McKenzie, Bird and Bird, Burges Salmon, CMS Cameron McKenna, Dechert, Dewey and LeBoeuf, Holman Fenwick Willan, K & L Gates, Kennedys, Mischon de Reya, Macfarlanes, Norton Rose, Olswang, Osborne Clarke, and Paul Hastings.
[X] has minimum academic requirements, so before completing our application form please give careful consideration to the following questions:
1 Do you have 3 A levels at grades A, B, B or equivalent? (N.B. Taken in one sitting and NOT including General Studies.
2 Have you gained or are you realistically expecting to gain a minimum 2.1 honours degree or equivalent?
3 Have you previously made an unsuccessful application to [X]?
Languages
4 Multiple languages can be added by selecting the language, and selecting fluency levels.
Education
5 [Percentage grades are now required for undergraduate and postgraduate subject results. You are required to ensure that your institution details and results are correct. You must include at least one secondary and one undergraduate record (including all results). You are also obliged to provide a complete breakdown of all your grades by subject, obtained during secondary school and university. Please list your all of your GCSEs and A' Levels or international equivalent.]
How did you hear about us?
6 [Various options are given.]
Referees
7 [You are normally required to enter details of two employers at least, sometimes one academic and one vocational.]
Other details
8 Excluding motor offences not resulting in a custodial sentence or disqualification from driving, have you ever had a criminal conviction (including any spent conviction which, by virtue of the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Exceptions) Order 1975, should be disclosed)?
9 Do you have any disability for which you require any assistance for during the selection process?
Work experience
10 [You are normally required to set out details of your work experience (usually 4 + “others”).]
Competence questions
Activities, interests, positions of responsibility
11 Please give brief details of your key non-academic extra-curricular hobbies, activities, leisure interests, highlighting any positions of responsibility whether at school, university or otherwise.
12 Describe your biggest achievement and/or most demanding position of responsibility you have held to date; why did this achievement stand out for you, and what did you learn from this?
Prizes
13 Please provide details of any academic prizes, distinctions, skills, scholarships and any other noteworthy achievements. In the case of skills please specify level of proficiency
Firm specification
14 Please explain why you think you are well suited to [], and have chosen to apply to [] for a training contract or vacation scheme placement? why you think you would make a successful trainee?
15 [X] is a leading UK law firm. How do you think we are distinct from other law firms?
16 All [X] trainee solicitors are based in our [Y] office. Please give your reasons for choosing to live in or around and train at the [Y] office.
Career motivation
17 What qualities do you think you possess to be a successful lawyer at [X]? Which areas of law interest you and why?
18 Please explain what attracts you to a career as a solicitor at an international business law firm, with reference to other careers that you might have considered and why you chose not to pursue them.
Commercial awareness
19 Identify a current commercial article that you read or a recent event from the business world which has attracted your attention recently. Why do you consider it to be significant? Who are the key stakeholders in this situation and what are the implications for those concerned?
20 Business acumen and commercial awareness are important elements to becoming a successful solicitor. Please outline, in your opinion, why you think this would be important and tell us about a time when you’ve demonstrated your abilities in this area. What was the occasion and what impact did possessing this awareness have over the final outcome?
21 Choose a sector group of the firm and summarise the biggest challenges and opportunities they will face in the future.
Proactivity
22 Describe an occasion when you spotted an opportunity to make an improvement in ‘going the extra mile’, and took action without being asked to do so. What steps did you take? What was the outcome? Explain why you think this attribute is relevant for a solicitor
Flexibility
23 Describe a time that you have had to change your approach to a project or task halfway through. What changes did you have to make? Why did you need to make these changes? What was the outcome?
Teamwork
24 Please give an example of a situation where you were required to work in a team to accomplish an important objective and describe your role in achieving this objective
Defining qualities of the candidate
25 What can you tell us about yourself that sets you apart from other applicants, and which are convincing reasons why we should recruit you?
Communication skills
27 All solicitors at [X] work with a wide range of people so need to be able to persuade, influence and display effective communication skills. Describe a situation when you have had to communicate effectively.
Conflict and pressure
26 The success of [X] is built on the self-motivation and applied effort of all its employees, as demonstrated by their ability to work through setbacks coping effectively with conflict and pressure. Describe a situation when you have had to deal with conflict and pressure. Which other people involved? What did you learn about yourself?
Commitment to excellence
27 Describe an occasion when you have demonstrated commitment to a task or project that resulted in you exceeding expectations either for yourself or others. What steps did you take? What was the outcome?
Gap year
28 If you have taken any gap years, please provide details of work/activities undertaken.
Personal challenge
29 Describe a significant challenge that you have faced outside of your academic studies ideally from the last 2 years. How did you initially analyse the challenge? What approach did you take to solving it? What did you learn from this challenge?
Mitigating circumstances
30 Are there any important mitigating circumstances why you feel the exam results you have listed do not fully reflect your abilities?
Additional information
31 If applicable, please state any additional information which you think is relevant and supportive to your application or which you think has not been covered adequately in this form
We are due to do a meeting on this at 5.30 pm in room 2.4 BPP Law School Holborn for all current members of BPP. Our handout can be downloaded here: BPP Legal Awareness Society handout on the online application form
Examples of practice for online verbal reasoning test questions: useful practice for training contract applicants
In the article below, none of the exemplars have been written by or in collaboration with any testing provider. Candidates are advised to look at their learning materials carefully.
In some verbal reasoning tests, 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)
This presentation is on the verbal reasoning test.
In the example below, you might 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.
Example 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.
Examples of questions might be:
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
Here are example questions with a business theme.
QUESTION
Business schools and venture capital firms have long organised entrepreneur-in-residence programs, tapping seasoned founders for a year or two to mentor students or evaluate potential investments. Now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are launching what it calls its own “Entrepreneurs in residence” initiative, to bring business leaders and academics into the agency to meet regularly with officials to improve the visa process. The goal is to “capture the full power of the laws that currently exist to attract talent to spur entrepreneurial growth, to maximize innovation – all for the benefit of our economy and the American worker“, according to agency director Alejandro Mayorkas. Specifics on the push Mayorkas announced today are still being hammered out. Names of the participants and mechanics on how the in-person meetings will work have not been announced yet, though the organiser expects to do so in the next week or so.
Venture capital firms have only recently been involved in organising entrepreneur-in-residence programs.
FALSE. The passage states that venture capital firms have ‘long organised’ such programs.
Names of the participants and information about how the in-person meetings will work will be announced within the next week.
CANNOT SAY. The passage provides that it is expected that this information will be provided within the next week, but it is not definitely the case that the information will be announced within the next week.
QUESTION
The number of so-called contingent workers has not been measured since 2005, when the Bureau of Labour Statistics last calculated the population. And now that the bureau has requested funding to resume the headcount, the Freelancers Union advocacy group is calling for changes in the way these workers are labeled and how their contribution to the U.S. economy is being measured. In a new policy paper, the Freelancers Union argues that the government is “ignoring a crucial, and growing, segment of the economy that is transforming the U.S. workforce.” The BLS’s ‘contingent work supplement’ was discontinued six years ago due to lack of funding. That year, contingent workers, which the BLS defines as labourers who consider their jobs temporary, made up about 4 percent of total employment.
‘Contingent workers’ are workers for work for an organisation on a non-permanent basis.
CANNOT SAY. This is in fact a valid definition of ‘contingent workers’, but this definition is not provided in the passage.
The BLS’ ‘contingent work supplement’ was discontinued a month ago due to lack of funding.
FALSE. This supplement was discontinued six years ago.
QUESTION
Small business owners are suffering from an economy hurt by reduced consumer? spending and stagnant growth, according to a new survey by the National Small? Business Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group. More than one-third say they aren’t confident about the future of their business from a financial perspective. Eighty-eight percent anticipate a recession or flat economy in the next year, an increase from 78 percent six months ago. Forty-five percent expect no growth opportunities in the coming year, up from 40 percent in December. Given the ongoing economic difficulties the U.S. has faced the past three years, small business owners overwhelmingly cited economic uncertainty as the most significant challenge to the future growth and survival of their business, according to the report.
Small business owners are suffering from lack of bank loans.
CANNOT SAY. Consumer spending and stagnant growth are cited as causes of hurt for small business owners, but one cannot exclude the possibility of small business owners suffering from lack of bank loans.
Six months ago 10 percent anticipated a recession or flat economy in the next year.
FALSE. Six months ago 78 percent anticipated a recession or flat economy in the next year.
To access lots of free materials, including factsheets and videos on psychometric tests, please go to the ‘Legal Recruit’ website.
@Legal_Recruit is also on Twitter here.
To take a free online trial, look at the second half of this page.
The new @Legal_Recruit verbal reasoning practice assessment for law students
The @Legal_Recruit system (which will be available here) is a very attractive easy-to-use cloud-based service which will allow @Legal_Recruit learners to complete sample tests, under real assessment conditions.
It will be available on Monday 3 October 2011 for the first time.
Current law students, who are doing the GDL, LPC, LLB(Hons) or LLM, especially those who are seeking training contracts or vacation placements for 2013/4/5 being made available in the next academic year may find this new service/product useful. It will be available on the internet via a secure website, and will cost £7.50 for unrestricted lifetime use. All Legal Recruit learners will have their own secure website username and password, and be invited to participate in the development of the huge bank of validated questions. These questions are set in a fair way, with due attention to equality, diversity and culture.
This product has been built because it is felt by many that law students, the staff of their colleagues/universities (including their academics and their career services) and corporate law recruiting managers that the pivotal importance of the verbal reasoning test is grossly underestimated. This is not sensible, given the intense effort needed to complete any qualification in law. However, if your performance in a verbal reasoning test, and you fail to meet the cut-off score, it is possible that you will not be invited for interview, despite having a II.1 or above. This is clearly a tragedy.
Such practice will be ideal for any law students needing to complete a SHL Direct assessment for their real training contract/vacation placement application. Candidates are strongly advised to look, as a top priority, the practice tests in the practice area of the SHL website. There you can take a full-length verbal reasoning test which has been made available from the main SHL Direct website and it’s well worth looking at the example questions. You’ll also most likely enjoy looking at the advice given about verbal reasoning tests on leading corporate law recruitment sites, such as Eversheds and Clifford Chance. Obviously, Legal_Recruit does not actively endorse any of the entities above, or vice versa.
There will be very clear instructions in the @Legal_Recruit practice assessments which are akin to the current SHL verbal reasoning instructions. In the practice test, you are allowed to go backwards, although in the real assessment you will not be given this option. You must complete the practice examples before you do the test, and you are told not to press any function keys or do any background jobs such as printing during the test itself.
The word count per passage will ideally vary from 70 to 150, with a mean length of 107. Passages will avoid as far as possible the use of semi-colons, and be of no shorter than 8-10 words. They will be written in plain English, with no spelling or grammar errors. The passages will therefore avoid American spelling or American English. The mean number of words in a sentence will be about 15-20.
Assessments will consist of 30 questions, containing 15 passages (2 questions per passage). The 15 passages will be selected at random by the Legal_Recruit system from a huge database consisting of an equal number of questions in the following 16 subject areas.
- Biology
- Business
- Economics
- Education
- Engineering
- Environment
- Geography
- Geology
- Health and Safety
- Human resources
- Medicine
- Modern Languages
- Physics
- Technology
- Transport
@Legal_Recruit follows the leading twitter accounts in the world which daily produce news stories, which make excellent narratives for the verbal reasoning assessment that Legal_Recruit will be offering.
Legal_Recruit learners will be able to choose a maximum time permitted from 19 to 39 minutes; this is to that it’s easy to do the assessments with reasonable adjustments for learners who will benefit from them to allow them to perform on a ‘level-playing field’.
It’s interesting that there is no subject bias at all in the exemplars. Interestingly the passages appears to avoid contentious branding, politics, or subjects which are generally controversial.
It is essential for our system to work for our questions to be carefully set in keeping with the real verbal reasoning tests which our Legal_Recruit learners will face in their real assessments set by SHL for their training contract/vacation placements. If you would like to participate for free, and receive immediate feedback, in our sample assessments, please direct message @legalaware or @legal_recruit, and if there are any problems in me following you, please do let me know immediately, and I will remedy. We benefit from obtaining a huge bank of normative data, which indicates to us that all the questions are of the same (correct) standard, and from being able to give you an accurate indication of where you sit on the normal distribution curve.
You may enjoy following up-to-date developments in online psychometric assessment on the @SHLGROUP twitter feed.
