Unofficial. Original practice questions written by Assize Careers. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, approved by or connected to Pearson, and no question on this page is reproduced from any Pearson assessment. Pearson publishes its own free practice booklet, and you should work through it: the official practice booklet is a PDF on pearsonvue.com. Our practice questions are written by us in the published formats. They are not the test publishers' own questions, we do not reproduce any publisher's items or convert your result into their scores or percentiles, and Assize Careers is not affiliated with, authorised by or endorsed by any test publisher, assessment provider, regulator or law firm.
What the test is
A critical thinking appraisal in five parts, taken in order. The publisher's own practice booklet names them: inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretation and evaluation of arguments. Each part gives you a short passage or statement, treated as if it were true, and asks a narrow question about what can be done with it. Nothing in the paper rewards knowing anything about the subject matter.
The inference part uses a five-point response scale rather than right and wrong: true, probably true, insufficient data, probably false, false. The other parts are binary. That scale is the published convention, and learning to use it is most of the work.
How long it takes
That depends on who is making you sit it, and the honest answer is that no single number applies. An employer licenses the test and sets the sitting; the publisher does not publish one universal time limit for the current product, so we do not state one. The one length we can source is historical: the Bar Course Aptitude Test, which was based on a Watson-Glaser test and delivered by Pearson VUE, was 60 multiple-choice questions in 55 minutes. Use roughly a minute a question as a planning assumption, and confirm the actual limit in the invitation email, which will say.
How it is marked, and what we will not do about it
Marks for correct responses, with no published negative marking. Your raw total then means nothing until it is compared with a comparison group, and those comparison groups are the publisher's. Pearson treats its scoring and its outputs as confidential, and its UK terms assert trade secret protection over scoring algorithms and reports. So this site has no percentile converter and never will. A practice score here tells you which question types you are losing marks on, which is the useful part, and nothing about where you would sit against anyone else's norm group.
What it is actually measuring
Discipline with evidence, not intelligence and not legal knowledge. Every subtest is a test of whether you can stay inside the four corners of what you have been given. That is why firms use it: the failure it detects, confidently asserting more than the material supports, is the failure that costs money in practice.
The five ways candidates lose marks
- Importing what you know. You are told to treat the passage as true and reason only from it. A candidate who knows the subject answers from memory and gets inferences wrong.
- Confusing "insufficient data" with "probably false". If the passage gives you nothing either way, the answer is insufficient data, however implausible the proposed inference sounds. "Probably false" needs evidence pointing against it.
- Reading an assumption as a fact about the world. Recognition of assumptions asks only whether the speaker must be taking something for granted for their statement to make sense. Whether it is true is irrelevant.
- Accepting a conclusion because it is plausible. Deduction asks whether the conclusion follows necessarily. A conclusion that is likely, sensible and probably correct in real life does not follow.
- Scoring arguments for truth instead of strength. Evaluation of arguments asks whether the argument is important and directly relevant to the question. True but trivial is weak.
What to do about it
Three habits, in order of how many marks they are worth. Read the question stem before the passage, so you know what you are looking for. Answer each item from the passage alone, and when you catch yourself reasoning from experience, stop and reread. Keep moving: on a timed sitting, the marks lost to unanswered questions at the end are usually more than the marks lost to haste.
Three practice questions, written by us
In the published formats, with the full reasoning. Three here, five free in each format with an account, and the rest in the paid plans.
Inference
Treat the passage as true. Then rate the proposed inference: true, probably true, insufficient data, probably false, or false.
A firm of solicitors with four offices reported that in the year to 31 March it received 2,000 new
enquiries: 1,200 through its website, 500 by telephone and 300 from existing clients. The firm
opened 400 of those enquiries as cases. It did not record which route the 400 came from.
Proposed inference: more of the firm's new cases came from its website than from the telephone.
- True
- Probably true
- Insufficient data
- Probably false
- False
Answer and explanation
C, insufficient data. The passage tells you the mix of enquiries and the total number of cases, and then tells you expressly that the route behind the 400 cases was not recorded. Nothing in it connects the two.
B is the trap the item is built around. The reasoning that leads to it is that the website produced 60% of enquiries, so it probably produced most of the cases. That is a real argument about the world and a wrong answer here, because it requires an assumption the passage does not supply: that each route converts to a case at a similar rate. Telephone callers are often further along in deciding to instruct someone, so the assumption is not even safe. Where the passage withholds the link you need, insufficient data is the answer, and the strength of your hunch is not evidence.
Recognition of assumptions
Decide whether the proposed assumption is necessarily taken for granted in the statement. Whether it is true in the world does not matter.
Statement by a practice manager: "We will cut the time it takes us to answer a client's email by
moving the whole team onto the new case management system."
Proposed assumption: how long the team takes to answer a client's email depends in part on the case
management system it uses.
- Assumption made
- Assumption not made
Answer and explanation
A, assumption made. The statement proposes the new system as the means of cutting response time. If response time had nothing to do with the system in use, the sentence would not make sense, so the speaker must be taking the connection for granted.
The attractive wrong answer comes from over-reading the claim. Candidates reject it because they notice that the manager has not shown the new system is faster, or because they think the real cause is staffing. Both may be right and neither is the question. The test asks for the minimum the speaker must be assuming, not whether the plan is any good. A separate proposed assumption that the new system is the fastest available would not be made, because the statement only needs it to be faster than the current one.
Evaluation of arguments
Decide whether the argument is strong, meaning both important and directly relevant to the question asked, or weak.
Question: should the small claims limit be raised, so that more disputes are heard in a procedure
where neither side normally recovers the cost of a lawyer?
Argument: no, because most people have never been inside a courtroom and would find the experience
unfamiliar.
- Strong argument
- Weak argument
Answer and explanation
B, weak. The statement is probably true, and that is not the test. It is weak because it does not bear on the question asked: unfamiliarity with a courtroom applies just as much to the claims already inside the limit, so it gives no reason against moving the line. It also proves too much, since it would argue against any hearing of any kind by anyone.
A is attractive because the argument is relevant to the general subject and emotionally reasonable, and because candidates reward true statements. Strength in this subtest means the argument would, if accepted, actually count for or against the specific proposal. An argument that unrepresented claimants in larger cases lose more often than represented ones would be strong on the same side, because it connects the change to an outcome.
If you are preparing for the Bar, read this first
The Bar Course Aptitude Test, which was the Watson-Glaser-derived test candidates used to sit before vocational Bar training, has not been required since 31 July 2022. The Bar Standards Board abolished the requirement after the Legal Services Board approved its rule change, saying the test "no longer serves a useful purpose". It was a 55-minute, 60-question test delivered by Pearson VUE at £150 in the UK. There is nothing to prepare for, and anyone selling you preparation for it in 2026 is selling preparation for a test that was withdrawn four years ago.
Critical-thinking tests still matter in legal recruitment, but now as part of private employer screening, not as a condition of Bar training. That is the reason this page exists.
Assize Careers is not a regulator, professional body, university, law school or official careers service, and it is not part of or endorsed by one. Nothing on this site is legal advice.