Recommended tests for assessing law skills
There are a few tests that would be useful when you are recruiting for a role in the law industry, and the following is an example of the ones that you might want to choose.
Verbal reasoning test
Verbal reasoning is about not only understanding written information, but being able to use that information to make logical and reasoned decisions. Decision making and judgement are important skills in law, as is being able to read and understand often-complicated business language.
In the verbal reasoning test, the candidate is given questions that are based on written information. Each question is presented as a passage of text, with a statement that follows. The candidate needs to decide if the statement is supported, only by the information in the passage.
To answer the question successfully, the candidate needs to read, understand, and analyze the passage of text to be able to say whether the statement is ‘true’, ‘false’, or if there is ‘not enough information to tell’.
Emotional intelligence test
When looking at general intelligence, IQ tests are usually a go-to assessment - but there is increasing evidence that suggests that emotional intelligence is more important, especially in the workplace. In the law industry, the staff is expected to be able to deal with different situations, process and understand their own emotions as well as the emotions of others, and make decisions based on fluid and changeable situations - and the emotional intelligence test will provide data on how well they can achieve that.
In the emotional intelligence test, candidates will be given images or descriptions, and they will need to decide what emotion is being represented. What is interesting about this sort of assessment is that there isn't really a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, the way the candidate responds will point to the way they view and understand the emotions of others.
Recruiters can use this information against a benchmark to decide which candidates have the right level of emotional intelligence to thrive in the legal profession.
Situational judgement test
Good judgement is needed in many different roles, and in the legal profession, it can be the difference between a good outcome for a client and a bad one. Making the right decisions on how to approach and deal with a problem is something that can’t usually be ‘taught’, it is an inherent skill that people have in different ways - and the situational judgement test is an excellent way to assess candidates on their problem-solving skills among others.
In the situational judgement test, the candidate is given different fictional workplace scenarios. These are based on real problems that they might encounter in the workplace, and each scenario is described in enough detail that the candidate will know what has happened, and they will know what they would do in the situation to solve the problem.
Following the scenario are several different options, representing different courses of action that could be taken to solve the problem. The candidate needs to decide which of these most accurately represents the way that they would approach the problem.
For the recruiter, the answer that the candidate chooses will show how they prefer to solve problems, their communication style, their work behavior, and their judgement skills.
Error checking test
With lots of data to read through and understand, and the creation of lots of their own data in different forms, those working in the law industry need to have a good eye for detail - not only able to spot errors in their own work, but able to find errors elsewhere that could help to win a case, for example.
In the error checking test, a simple list of information is seemingly replicated - but it is not identical, and the candidate needs to spot the errors in the information.
This might include lists of product numbers, postcodes, telephone numbers, or names - but the idea is that the candidate should be able to find all of the differences between the two sets of alphanumeric data.
Accountability test
Whether in a leadership position or not, those working in the law industry will be expected to take a high level of responsibility for their work. Whether that involves cases or just filing things accurately, accountability, reliability, and integrity are all important facets of a candidate that will be successful in the legal profession.
The accountability test puts candidates into fictional work scenarios, where they will need to make decisions about problems and issues that require ethical consideration to solve with integrity and accountability. In a similar way to other scenario-based assessments, the accountability test provides details about the scenario, followed by several possible courses of action that the candidate must choose from.
