UK law schools announce new admissions test
3 February 2004
Eight law schools at universities in England have agreed to establish a uniform test for admission to their undergraduate law degrees.
The test is designed to provide an assessment of a candidate's potential for law degree courses. It is not a replacement for A levels. It will be used as an additional piece of information for selection decisions alongside A levels, GCSE results and the other information available to law schools on a candidate's application form, as well as, where applicable, the candidate's performance in interview.
The LNAT is intended to improve the selection process and to make it fairer to all candidates, whatever their educational background, by:
· helping to identify applicants with the aptitude and skills necessary
for success on law degree courses
· providing objective evaluations of candidates from a wide range of
social and educational backgrounds by assessing essential general intellectual
skills of comprehension, analysis, logic and judgment
· enabling more informed and equitable selection decisions to be made
on candidates with the highest possible grades in public examinations
· enabling more informed and equitable selection decisions to be made
on candidates who may have more modest grades for a range of reasons but who
have the potential to succeed on law degree courses
· decreasing the overall burden of testing of candidates by substituting
a uniform national test for the tests that the individual law schools would
otherwise use
· enabling the fair selection of candidates with many different academic
qualifications, from many different countries
The law schools of the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, East Anglia, Nottingham, Oxford and University College London are establishing the LNAT. They intend to contract with an established examination body to administer the test in schools and colleges across the country and eventually around the world.
The test will be of two hours duration and will have two sections. The first,
of 80 minutes, will be multiple choice questions assessing candidates'
ability to read, understand, analyse, and make logical deductions from, passages
of text in formal English. The second, of 40 minutes, will be an essay chosen
from a list of titles. Since these are not tests of knowledge but of fundamental
intellectual skills, no prior legal study will be necessary. It is believed
that the test will be relatively impervious to coaching. Sample questions will
be made available in due course.
It is hoped that by eliminating the need for any extra study the test will be
fairer to all candidates and particularly those candidates whose educational
or social background may not provide equal opportunities for preparation. In
this way the test will help to widen participation in higher education.