Unofficial. Original practice questions written by Assize Careers. 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.
Employers do not write these tests. They license them from assessment publishers, and the publishers named on this page are named for one reason only: so you know which published format our practice questions are written to. We have no relationship with any of them.
Verbal reasoning: what it asks
A passage of a few hundred words, usually on a subject you know nothing about, followed by statements you classify. The common response convention is three-way: true, false, or cannot say on the information given. Some employers use a longer scale, and some ask you to pick the statement the passage supports. The underlying question is always the same, which is whether a statement follows from this passage, and not whether it is true.
Numerical reasoning: what it asks
One or more tables or charts, then multiple-choice questions requiring percentages, ratios, rates, proportions and the occasional two-step calculation. The arithmetic rarely goes beyond what is taught by age 16. The difficulty is in locating the right cell, noticing the units, and answering the question that was asked rather than the one that was easiest to compute.
How long they take, and why we will not give you a number
The time limit is set by the employer when it configures the sitting, and publishers sell several instruments with different lengths. We have not found a published, current, universal time limit for either format, so this page does not state one. Your invitation email will. Plan on roughly a minute a question until it tells you otherwise, and treat the pacing as part of what is being assessed.
Calculator policy varies the same way. Some sittings provide an on-screen calculator, some allow your own, some allow neither. Check the instructions, and practise both ways, because a candidate who has only ever practised with a calculator loses real time without one.
How they are marked
Number of correct answers, and in some instruments the number attempted matters as well, because accuracy and speed are reported separately. Your raw score is then compared with a group of other candidates, and that comparison group belongs to the publisher. We do not have it, cannot compute it and do not publish anything resembling a percentile. Practice here will tell you which question types you get wrong and how your accuracy changes as a set goes on. It will not tell you how you compare to anybody, and nothing that claims to should be believed without being asked whose norms it used.
One thing we will never ask you for
Your results from a publisher's own practice test. SHL, for example, permits its free practice tests to be used by you to familiarise yourself with its products and expressly does not permit you to share your results with a third party. There is therefore no leaderboard here, no upload box and no comparison against other people's publisher scores. Sit the official practice material and keep the result to yourself.
Where the marks actually go
- Verbal: treating "cannot say" as a failure. It is the correct answer whenever the passage is silent, and silence is common. Candidates who dislike the option talk themselves into true or false and lose marks in pairs.
- Verbal: reading in a cause. A passage that reports two things happening together rarely says that one caused the other. If the statement adds a cause, the passage usually cannot support it.
- Verbal: being defeated by the subject. The passages are deliberately dull and technical. You do not need to understand the topic, only to match words to words.
- Numerical: answering the wrong question. The change in a total and the change in a rate are different numbers, and the distractors are built from the one you were not asked for.
- Numerical: units and bases. Thousands against units, percentages of different denominators, a percentage point against a percentage change. Read the column heading twice.
- Numerical: over-precision. Options are often far apart, so an estimate decides the question in a quarter of the time a full calculation takes.
What to do about it
For verbal, decide what each statement would need in order to be true, then go looking for it, and accept "cannot say" the moment you cannot find it. For numerical, read the question, then the headings, then the data, in that order, and estimate before you calculate. For both, practise against the clock at least once before the real sitting, because the only part of these tests most candidates have never rehearsed is the pace.
Three practice questions, written by us
Verbal reasoning
Read the passage. Then classify each statement as true, false or cannot say on the information given. Both statements below refer to the same passage.
A regulator's annual report said that the number of firms holding a contract for publicly funded housing work fell in each of the three years covered by the report, and that the fall was steepest in the third year. The report said that the firms which gave up the work were concentrated outside the largest cities. It did not state how many firms held such a contract at the start of the period, and it did not state why any firm had given the work up.
Statement 1: fewer firms held a contract for publicly funded housing work at the end of the three years than at the start.
- True
- False
- Cannot say
Answer and explanation
A, true. The passage says the number fell in each of the three years. Three consecutive falls necessarily leave the number lower at the end than at the start, so the statement follows.
C is the trap here, and it is a careful reader's mistake rather than a careless one: the report never gives a single absolute number, so it looks as though nothing quantitative can be established. But the statement is about direction, not level, and the direction is stated expressly. Ask what the statement actually claims before deciding the passage is too thin to support it.
Statement 2: firms gave up publicly funded housing work because the rates paid for it were too low.
- True
- False
- Cannot say
Answer and explanation
C, cannot say. The passage reports a fall and where it was concentrated, and says in terms that it did not state why any firm gave the work up. A reason is exactly what is missing.
A is attractive because the explanation is plausible, is the one the sector itself usually gives, and is consistent with the geography the passage does report. None of that is in the passage. This is the classic way to lose marks on a verbal test: supplying the causal link the author left out. Note also that the answer is not false. The passage does not contradict the statement either, and candidates who overcorrect into false lose the same mark.
Numerical reasoning
A set of chambers recorded its pupillage recruitment for two years. In 2024 it received 640 applications and offered 8 pupillages. In 2025 it received 800 applications and offered 10. How did the number of applications per pupillage offered change between 2024 and 2025?
- It rose by 25%
- It fell by 25%
- It did not change
- It rose by 2 applications per pupillage
Answer and explanation
C, it did not change. In 2024, 640 divided by 8 is 80 applications per pupillage. In 2025, 800 divided by 10 is also 80. Applications and offers both rose by a quarter, so the ratio is flat.
A is the designed distractor and it is correct arithmetic applied to the wrong quantity: applications did rise 25%, from 640 to 800. The question asked about applications per pupillage, which is a rate, and a rate can be unchanged while both of its components move. D comes from reading the rise in offers, from 8 to 10, as though it were the rate, and B from dividing the two years the wrong way round. The habit that saves you here costs two seconds, which is to underline the quantity named in the question before touching the numbers.
Game-based and behavioural assessments, and why there is nothing here for them
A growing number of employers use task-based or behavioural assessments rather than a conventional reasoning test. We publish no practice for those. We could not read the publishers' own terms or their own published position on whether practice is appropriate, and some of these instruments are described as deliberately resistant to rehearsal. Selling you practice for an assessment we cannot describe accurately would be selling you something we cannot stand behind. If you are invited to one, read the invitation carefully, do the familiarisation the publisher provides, and sleep well first.
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