Ten Percent Legal Recruitment

Assessment Day Advice

Legal Assessment Day Advice & Assistance

Assessment Days for Lawyers and Law Students can be extremely stressful, although usually a fairly enjoyable experience if you like a challenge. Some firms use them, others avoid them. It is an easy way to quickly assess a large number of applicants and whittle down the applications to something more manageable at interview stage.

Typical Assessment Day Timetable

A typical assessment day is as follows (this is an account from a potential trainee solicitor attending an assessment day in the North West):

Introductions – we had to write a few facts about ourselves on a side of a4 paper, screw it in to a ball and throw it in the centre of the room, we all then had to go grab a ball and discover who it was and then use that to introduce the person to the group.

We then had a group exercise. We were a group of four hikers, lost in a snowstorm – in a tent -and had to decide on how many people should look for – and then from a list of 19 items decide which ten should be taken by the people who went for help and what items should remain for the people staying in the tent.

I then had a competency based interview. First question ‘what is your unique selling point’ (I nearly fell off my chair) – other questions included examples of being commercially aware, greatest non academic achievement etc..

The comprehension exercise was in a vein of a spelling test. There was a sentence or two with words missing an you had to choose which went where. affect/effect advise/advice were the simple ones I can remember there were some very tricky ones which definitely threw me. There were 40 to do in 20 minutes (plenty of time).