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National Admission Test for Law announced

3 February 2004

A new national university admission test for law was announced today. Eight law schools at universities in England have agreed to establish a uniform test for admission to their undergraduate law degrees. The test will be taken for the first time by candidates in November 2004 for entry in 2005. The test will be made available to other law schools that wish to use it, and will be compulsory for those candidates applying to any of the participating universities.

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:

The LNAT is being established by the law schools of the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, East Anglia, Nottingham, Oxford and University College London. 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.

Cambridge received 1,400 applications for about 230 places for law this year, from very academically able students. The decision to admit candidates is made by the Colleges, rather than by the University Law Faculty. Many Colleges already use aptitude tests as one element in their admissions decisions for law applicants. In that respect, their decision to offer the LNAT will not greatly change their present approach to admissions.

In Cambridge, it is not intended that the LNAT should be a substitute for the admissions interview. Even after the LNAT has been introduced, a candidate's performance in interview will remain an important part of the College's admissions decision, along with the information in the candidate's application papers. The LNAT numerical score is not intended to determine the admissions decision. Rather, it will provide a further element of information in selecting the most intellectually able candidates who have the strongest potential to succeed in studying law.

The intention of the Colleges is to pilot the LNAT in its first year of operation. Although candidates applying for law would generally be expected to take the LNAT, it is expected that Colleges would make their initial admissions decision in the normal way, independently of the LNAT numerical score. The score would then be taken into account as a check on that decision, which might be reviewed in the light of it.

For more information, contact:

• Dr David Fox, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. Tel: 01223 330033.