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Whilst this educational video is not designed specifically to help you with a particular provider of assessments for situational judgement, you may find the general principles here useful. You should ask your legal recruitment team whether they use situational judgement tests, and, if so, in what format.
The situational judgement test is designed to find out how you would theoretically behave in different work-related situations. This is a short questionnaire, comprising a series of situations or scenarios similar to those you may encounter as a newly-qualified legal trainee.
Your response to these scenarios gives law firms a very 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 professional legal services firms. Normally law firms have a threshold mark that they would like you to achieve – therefore, it does not matter on the general calibre of the group, in that they are not seeking to ‘pass’ a fixed percentage of applicants.
There is no time limit but the questionnaire should take you approximately 20-25 minutes to complete. The questions are designed by psychologists who ask managers or other current employess of the company (a) what typical situations arise in the job role and (b) how an existing successful employee would ideally behave in response to that situation. To be a solicitor in the UK, it is certainly expected that your professional behaviour would be consistent with the Code of Conduct published by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Your answers to the multiple choice questions are compared to the ‘model’ answers to see how closely your behavioural traits match those of already successful people at the company. The ultimate aim is that law firms are able to attract the ‘right’ graduates – individuals with the qualities, skills and potential to make the most of theIr training and become leaders of the future.
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Background to situational judgement tests
Background to difficulties and online assessments