Law @ Downing, Cambridge in 2021

Interview format

LNAT (but this wasn't required for Cambridge at the time), Cambridge Law Admissions Test, 1x interview

Interview content

Question on something mentioned in personal statement, question on pre-reading, then discussion on hypothetical legal scenarios

Best preparation

Re-reading personal statement and practicing defending opinions; mock interviews

Test preparation

LNAT questions, some law-related essay practice

Final thoughts

Your interviewers aren't there to catch you out, try to look at it as a conversation

Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.

Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.

Interview Format

Test taken: National Admissions Test for Law (LNAT), The Cambridge Law Admissions Test (as Cambridge at the time did not use LNAT as a requirement)
Number of interviews: 1
Length of interviews: 35 Minutes
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

In my interview, I was barely asked about my personal statement while others I knew were asked a lot about them. The one question they asked me from it was on my Extended Project which I mentioned at the end of my personal statement and spent only 5 minutes on. At the beginning of my interview, they had asked me a few questions on the 30 minute pre-reading extract they gave me before the interview on a certain area of law, asking me about areas in the text which was thankfully alright to navigate.

The rest of the interview was based on hypothetical legal scenarios and my responses to them, some of which I now recognise as fact patterns based on real cases. They wanted to focus on why I thought what I did about the hypothetical scenarios, assessing my gut reaction and then working on it. I'm sure some answers I gave were incorrect but they led me with questions to challenge my perspective i.e. if I thought X shouldn't be responsible for doing Y, then they'd change the fact pattern to make it harder to reach a black and white legal answer.

My interviewers were very friendly and somehow, my mock interviews were much harder than the real one - whether I lucked out with having an objectively easier interview than the rest of my law peers or whether I underestimated my own abilities I will never know. I felt very relaxed (which was helped by the interview being virtual) and actually had a very good time during my interview and kind of wished that I had a longer interview to showcase everything (as I got pooled in the end but also, I'm not sure whether the pooling was on the basis of my interview or just pure numbers as I applied to a popular College).

How did you prepare for your interviews?

I mainly re-read over my personal statement many times and made sure that I could defend the opinions that I put in there as they were quite assertive and also made sure that I knew my case facts back to front. I also talked to an organisation called In2Law who helped give me some advice for the interview and my Sixth Form put me in contact with law students and barristers who were willing to give up their time to give me a mock interview - this may not be possible for all students, I was extremely privileged.

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

I actually was not that prepared for the Cambridge assessment. For the LNAT I practised with large textbooks with multiple choice questions but as for the Cambridge assessment, I didn't expect to make it to interview and only had two days to prepare for the written essay. I only had practiced about 2 law-related essay prompts that Cambridge themselves provided but besides that, I didn't have much guidance at all.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

I would try to not exactly make sure my answers were 'polished' per se, but definitely more tailored for my degree. For example, while I got asked a question on my EPQ, only after the interview I realised I could have said a very important point but rushed through the question because I didn't take a few seconds to think and articulate myself. It's also okay to ask questions back to them if you don't understand anything or if you missed something that they said - I asked a few times for clarification as well as time to just think for a few seconds.

Your interviewers aren't there to catch you out and look for areas where you are incorrect but they just want to see how you think, what your thought process is and what your original ideas and thoughts are since that knowledge does come from 1) your interest in the subject and 2) your own knowledge of the subject thus far BEFORE you have become a student, and that can be really impressive! Interviewers themselves also know if they're asking something tough or not so they will move on from an answer if they feel like you need a different direction (not a bad thing) or if they're satisfied with your answer. The best thing to do is look at your interviews as just having a conversation, albeit with intelligent people.