Test taken: Cambridge Law Test (CLT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 3 hours
Length of interviews: 1 hour
Online interview: No

My first interview was the "law interview". I was given an article to read for 15 minutes and was then interviewed by the DoS for my subject and a PhD student. It was pretty straightforward (much less daunting than I expected!) and they asked me to summarise the article and answer a few questions about it. I think it is difficult to prepare for this interview because the topic of the article will likely depend on your DoS's area of interest (which could range from criminal law and murder reform to employment law and the gig economy). Don't worry though if this sounds a bit scary - they don't expect you to have any in-depth knowledge in any area they choose! They just want to see how quickly you can absorb facts, extract the relevant information and engage in a discussion.

My second interview was the "general interview". This focused more on me, the subjects I had done at school and discussing my personal statement. I found this to be the scarier of the two interviews because they asked me questions from all over the place. The most challenging part of the interview was them asking me very broad questions and expecting me to engage in a debate. I definitely think more than my answers, they wanted to see how quickly I could adapt to the challenging questions and how much effort I put into constructing my responses - I often asked them to define certain terms (as an international student, I wasn't very clear on the UK public/ private school system) and I don't think this disadvantaged me at all! They were very understanding and happy to explain - they just wanted to see my thought process in action!

The most useful thing I did was prepare answers to a few "obvious" questions (Why do you want to study law? Why are you interested in studying in the UK?) and that really helped me settle into the interview. It's very likely your first question will be "Tell us about yourself" or "Why law?" so having that initial preparation really makes answering the rest of the questions easier. I think just making sure you've read over your Personal Statement and are able to talk about any of the books you've read/ activities you've done is useful. If you walk into the interview knowing what you want your interviewers to take away (e.g. "hardworking", "enthusiastic"), then it'll be easier to answer questions in a more structured manner.

Practice CLT papers from the Law Faculty website

My experience of both my interviews was that they wanted me to "think out loud". Even if I didn't always have the answers, they were very happy to guide me when I asked questions and just wanted to see how I arrived at my conclusion. Even though a little bit of preparation will help to soothe your nerves, my advice would be not to over-prepare (easier said than done!). Given how fluid the interviews are (and the vast range of topics you could discuss), if you've spent ages preparing for a niche area of law (e.g. tax law), then if your interviewers don't want to discuss this - you'll get flustered and find it more difficult to adapt to whatever they do want you to discuss. Instead, I would try and develop the skill of quickly developing an opinion on a random topic (maybe by trying a random word generator online) and feeling comfortable defending your opinion on short notice.