Psychometrics in Legal Recruitment

One thing we know for sure, from almost a century of research evidence, is that the more cognitively complex the role, the more cognitive ability tests predict performance (Bertua et al, 2005). For example, in simple blue-collar roles, the association between cognitive ability test scores and job performance is relatively weak (but still positive and significant). In moderately complex administrative and clerical roles, the association between the two strengthens, showing moderate-to-strong correlations. But for complex professional, technical, and managerial roles, this association is substantially stronger—more so than any other known characteristic.

Cognitive ability itself can be defined as a person's ability to learn, solve problems, and make decisions, representing the overall processing power of one's mind. Greater levels of cognitive ability allow people to acquire skills faster, retain knowledge more accurately, and reach higher levels of mastery within specific skill domains, making it key to any form of knowledge work (Schmidt, 2002). Legal roles are the epitome of knowledge work, making cognitive assessments powerful indicators of performance.

Put simply, cognitive assessments are just more useful in legal recruitment than they are elsewhere, meaning the results will be more closely aligned with real-world performance. Low performers are disproportionately likely to struggle in the role, and high performers are far more likely to excel—to a degree that is hard to match elsewhere. That being said, there are other indicators of performance and fit outside cognitive ability, but psychometrics are well suited to measure those as well.

Dealing with these complex demands requires a range of behavioural characteristics that also underpin success, and these are uniquely well understood compared to other roles (Daicoff, 1996). Legal work requires people to be industrious, assertive, resilient, and show exceptional attention to detail, which are all behavioural characteristics. This clear profile makes personality questionnaires a useful supplement to cognitive assessments, helping to round out a profile with additional soft skills. Rarely are the specific characteristics that underpin success so well understood and easily measured, representing an excellent use case for personality questionnaires too.

In legal recruitment, however, desirable characteristics are well known and easily relatable. Lawyers often work long hours under high pressure, requiring significant resilience. They deliberate over the minutiae of contracts and legal documents, requiring significant attention to detail.

They are rewarded generously for performance and punished for underperformance, making industriousness key to success. Although these characteristics are almost impossible to measure reliably in an interview due to the interference of charisma, personality questionnaires can measure them far more accurately.

Another major reason why psychometrics are particularly effective in legal recruitment is that performance is highly variable between individuals, and the value of performance is high. High-performing lawyers add tremendous value to their employing organisations, as success or failure can be make or break.

This isn’t always the case in the workplace, as in many roles underperformance can go undetected for many years without raising any red flags. Similarly, in many roles, there simply isn’t much of a premium on top performance, as the outcome for the organisation is only slightly more favourable than average performance (Hunter et al, 1990).

In this section, we will outline three ways in which game-based assessments can be more accessible than traditional assessments in recruitment and employee selection.

Because psychometrics are predictors of performance, the ROI from that performance prediction will be larger than in most other roles, making psychometrics far more useful. Not only could psychometrics serve as an early warning system for underperformance, but they can also help identify those diamonds in the rough who have huge potential to perform, generating a significant return for the company. Consequently, organisations should think of psychometric testing as an investment, particularly law firms.

Additionally, in legal recruitment, the variance in performance is particularly high, with glaring differences between high, average, and low performance.

However, in legal recruitment, the opposite is true, and performance is extremely variable between candidates. This makes it imperative that HR and TA teams thoroughly screen beforehand to avoid eventual disappointment or opportunity costs down the line.

Performance is also particularly easy to track in legal professions, and organisational cultures tend to be inherently meritocratic, making the adoption of psychometrics more straightforward. This makes it easier for organisations to run validity studies and link performance on psychometrics to performance in the role, which can be very helpful for stakeholder buy-in.

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In law firms, the product is quite literally its people, rather than any kind of physical or digital product. Moreover, there is a strong culture of traineeship in legal recruitment, and even small law firms will run graduate and apprentice-level trainee schemes. This has two major implications:

• Law firms often receive a far larger number of applications than other organisations of comparable size.
• Applicants tend to be fresh graduates or current students with little real-world experience.

This makes psychometric tests the ideal selection tool in this context, as psychometrics are the only truly scalable selection tool. CV sifting, interviews (video and in-person), and assessment centres do not scale, as screening 1,000 CVs takes a hundred times more time than screening 10 CVs. However, inviting 1,000 candidates to complete an online assessment takes a similar amount of time as inviting 10, making the modality far more scalable for high-volume sifting.

Not only is this a tremendously resource-intensive activity, but CV and application form sifting show little to no validity in recruitment, making them extremely poor choices for screening. This is particularly true now that ChatGPT is writing everyone’s CVs and application form responses, leaving these forms of assessment obsolete. Instead, online assessments can create far higher-quality shortlists while simultaneously saving HR and TA teams a huge amount of time and effort during screening.

Law firms have an unfortunate history of being elitist institutions, favouring candidates from high socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds (Johnson, 2003).. This takes many forms, including prioritising candidates with a private school education, prestigious university attendance, or even outright nepotism. Inevitably, this has deleterious effects on the quality of hire, as candidates are selected based on characteristics that are only indirectly related to performance. For example, many law firms believe that only the smartest candidates attend prestigious universities, and therefore they must only attract those candidates. This logic is myopic, as you can literally measure how smart candidates are with cognitive assessments—you don’t need to infer that information from university choice; it's a redundant step.

This tradition also ends up being disadvantageous to other groups too, as SES is closely aligned to other demographics (Williams, 1996). For example, selection practices have also impacted candidates based on their ethnic group. Historically, private school education has been ethnically homogenous, resulting in an overrepresentation of white candidates relative to the wider population. Organisations now, however, have diversity and inclusion objectives, which include ethnic diversity. Psychometrics are impartial and objective, insulating selection processes from implicit (or explicit) bias, giving everyone a fair chance.

Neurodiversity is another area of interest for employing organisations, and law firms are no exception. A great many neurodivergent applicants would make exceptional lawyers, and recruitment teams are keen to tap into this pool of applicants. Interviews, however, are by far the most discriminatory assessment methodology when it comes to neurodivergence, particularly autism (Whelpley et al, 2023). Psychometrics, however, are both far fairer for neurodivergent candidates and extremely easy to provide accommodations for. Extra time, changing text size, background colour, contrast, etc., are easily applied online and represent very reasonable adjustments.

The last advantage that organisations have when it comes to using psychometrics in legal recruitment is that it's already extremely commonplace. In the UK, a huge proportion of law firms use critical thinking tests as part of their trainee scheme selection—it’s almost ubiquitous. Critical thinking tests are a type of cognitive assessment that focuses on high-level problem-solving and verbal reasoning ability. Naturally, as legal work is extremely qualitative (rather than quantitative), this makes critical thinking tests the ideal cognitive assessment for legal recruitment.

This means that candidates expect to be tested, and law firms typically see far higher completion rates than other industries. This matters because the value you get from assessments is directly proportional to the number of people you can test, as this allows you to be highly selective. Because legal candidates are comfortable with being tested, you can use the assessments more liberally than in other industries, maximising value.

Additionally, because candidates are familiar with this style of testing, they are less likely to make silly mistakes or experience test anxiety. These factors serve as confounding variables that lower people’s scores, harming the validity of the selection process. But in law, because candidates will be applying to many different law firms, testing is to be expected, and candidates will be thoroughly prepared for an upcoming assessment.

Although psychometrics add significant value in any role, rarely do they add as much value as they do in legal recruitment. The tests are more predictive, performance is more valuable, volumes are higher, objectivity and fairness are key, and candidates are keen to actually complete them—a near-perfect use case. Consequently, introducing psychometrics for legal recruitment is one of the highest-impact changes an HR team can make—nothing else really comes close.

That being said, not all assessments are created equal, and not all assessment providers have equal expertise. Many assessment providers unfortunately lack the expertise required to develop valid, reliable, and fair assessments, substantially reducing the ROI from their use. However, this isn’t a problem unique to assessments—this is the case in any market where quality varies between providers. Consequently, organisations must do their due diligence and ensure that their chosen provider actually knows what they are doing.

For more information on how Test Partnership could help you with selection and assessment, feel free to get in touch and book a call.