On 24 February 2011, Catherine Baksi from the Law Gazette reported that the Chair of the Bar’s Regulator, Baroness Ruth Deech, had said that too many people on the Bar Professional Training Course (“BPTC”) are ‘wasting their money’ because they are ‘not up to it’.

Baroness Deech said the Bar Standards Board (BSB) would press ahead with its plans to introduce aptitude tests for students before they can undertake the BPTC.

This week they indeed proposed a new aptitude test, the Bar Course Aptitude Test (“BCAT”), and are welcoming feedback on their public consultation before 29 February 2012. This test is designed to measure an aptitude to complete the BPTC, though we are specifically not told whether this is the same for aptitude for a successful career at the Bar. The BSB perceives the main problem to be the current high failure rates of the BPTC.

Currently the admissions requirement for the BPTC at both the College of Law and BPP, as well as an arbitrary good standard of English, is a II.2, whereas the usual minimum requirement for a corporate training contract is a II.1. Currently, at Cambridge, approximately 80% of students achieve in Part II of the Tripos (Finals) a I, II.1 or II.2 in some subjects. The most parsiminious explanation therefore for a high failure rate on the BPTC is actually that its academic requirements are simply not high enough. However, many teachers feel that a simplistic judgement based on academic qualifications is not that fair in determining success in this profession.

Most curiously, the latest initiative from the Bar Standards Board seems to be in a ‘parallel universe’ to the excellent initiative, including eminent academics, teachers and lawyers, called the ‘Legal Education and Training Board‘. Part of the problem for the high failure rate of the BPTC, according to the BSB, may be students not succeeding in small, interactive sessions such as involving role-play.

It is now consistently acknowledged that people have different skills in general cognitive (thinking) intelligence and social/emotional intelligence. In the current management and leadership literature, as well as in experimental psychology, the role-plays found in the BPTC would in fact be considered to tapping domains of emotional intelligence, as framed latterly by Daniel Goleman, not traditional cognitive intelligence. The BCAT is based on the Watson-Glaser Test, and this test does not test emotional intelligence at all. For anybody to ignore knowingly the recent decades of intelligence in the last decades is rather perplexing. The BCAT does not test either how law students would react in well-validated ‘real life’ scenarios they might experience as a law student, or ultimately a trainee. This would be a ‘situational judgement test’.

The main potential fault with the solution proposed within the proposed BCAT is that there exist no published data about the reliability of the Watson-Glaser Test in predicting success on a BPTC course. To my knowledge, one magic circle firm is thought to use the Watson-Glaser Test in selection of future solicitors, and the most of the rest use the SHL online verbal reasoning test. It has previously been argued that psychometric testing should not a sole criterion for job suitability. There is no compulsory regulatory requirement of these psychometric tests, but the British Psychological Society has been calling for best practice standards in this field for a longtime along with their European counterparts. There are few published studies about the correlation between psychometric tests and performance in a any professional legal service environment, let alone formal studies comprising barristers or solicitors in training.

The BSB consultation provides a description of the features of the ideal psychometric aptitude test, and this indeed useful; it is a list of characteristics which few people in this field would disagree with. However, even if you are testing cognitive intelligence rather than emotional intelligence, there are many different cognitive skills you can choose. For example, it is possible to perform poorly at the SHL online verbal reasoning test due to cognitive deficits in learning, memory, attention, strategy and language, so therefore most reasonable cognitive neuropsychologists would find drawing conclusions from such tests difficult. However, these tests determine the future of intelligent students wishing with all the best will to enter the learned profession. Morale of my student colleagues is poor – managing strategic change like this new test will need the goodwill of the profession, including all its stakeholders such as students. The Bar Standards Board will then have to listen carefully to the expert views of academics, not just psychological test suppliers.

However, the Bar Standards Board have to be congratulated for producing and recommending such a comprehensive proposal for a practical aptitude test for the BPTC, the success of which is pivotal for regulating overall standards at the Bar from an early stage. The proposal, if students can afford it, seems eminently practical with an industry-respected test supplier. The views of the open public consultation are bound to be interesting.