Trainee Legal Adviser- Interview Questions

There’s not really any specific advice people can give as the assessment changes every year. When I did the test it was on allocation and plea before venue for a specific offence. It also depends whether you’ve opted to go down the crime route or family, as the question will be tailored.

You should receive something about a week before your assessment which will assist in narrowing it down.

Generally speaking, you’ll be asked to advise the interview panel on whatever the assessment topic is as if you were a legal adviser in court. Be sure of your advice but be ready to say “I’m not sure” - a good legal adviser always admits that and says they need to check rather than guessing or giving inaccurate advice. Be clearly spoken and maintain eye contact.


You’ll be asked some competency based questions and strengths based. My only advice is to make sure you have multiple examples of each competency they identified in the application as quite often people come with one, which doesn’t fit the question, but they try and force it to and it doesn’t work.

Dear DMS,
Thank you very much for your reply and your amazing advise. Much apoteciated.

Yes - I am sure they change it every time.

They did mention in the job description that there will be a legal scenario but when I received the interview invitation, they didn't mention anything about the sceanrio/ assessment.

Mine is a virtual interview.

Where you made aware about the scenario/ assessment when you received the interview invitation or only 1 week before the interview?
Thank you so much in advance.

Yes you should receive the legal scenario either a couple of days before the interview, or sometimes they do it on the day to test your quick reasoning abilities.

Yes it requires legal knowledge - the entire role of legal adviser requires you to advise the magistrates on law and procedure. You ideally need a good grounding in criminal law to be able to do so, although training on the job is provided.

In terms of how busy the court is, it depends where you are. The courts are always “busy” because they deal with over 95% of all criminal cases to conclusion and also deal with Road Traffic and civil applications. But how busy depends on location. For example I am a legal adviser in a rural county so we’re busy, but not as busy as our neighbouring big city courts where the total number of cases exceeds ours.

You’ll need to read about the exemption carefully because it relates to the transitional arrangements between LPC and SQE. It is essentially a way of qualifying if you’ve done the training contract route but qualifying under the SQE.

As an aside since you asked about busy-ness; London is the busiest court centres in the country.