Cambridge Law Test (CLT); 2x interviews.
Interview 1: application of a fake statute to various scenarios; Interview 2: discussion of a judgement excerpt and its related topics.
Reading introductory books to legal concepts. CLT prep (see next section) also helped in the interview.
Past papers on the faculty website; timed essays; looking at sample essays.
Think aloud during the interview. This student's recommended readings include: 'What about law?', 'The Rule of Law', 'Letters to a Law Student' etc.
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.
Test taken: Cambridge Law Test (CLT)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: 2 hours
Length of interviews: 20 minutes
Online interview: No
Both interviews were led by a senior academic at the College with another person present who didn't say much but observed the entire thing.
One interview focused on a fake statute which I had to apply to increasingly complex factual situations. I found this one fairly straightforward as I had been given 20 minutes of prep time with the statute beforehand and it was not very long or complicated.
The other interview focused on an excerpt of a judgment leading into a broader discussion on the law of murder. This one was harder to prepare for as the excerpt was longer and the prep time was still only 20 minutes, but the interviewer was very friendly and made me feel very comfortable in talking through my thought process out loud before I had an answer which is what they wanted me to do. She also provided more information or an alternative suggestion if I couldn't think of anything more to say but it felt very relaxed and not intense at all. It was more like a conversation about law than an adversarial interview.
I read 'What about law?' and 'The Rule of Law' for some background knowledge and discussion about important legal concepts. I had a
Other than that I made sure to prepare for the CLT (Cambridge Law Test) as well, which happened on the same day as my interviews. Pretty much all the preparation was useful for both the test and interview as they are testing many of the same skills (critical thinking and analysis) - but the essay is also testing writing skills and the interview makes sure you can think quickly and respond to challenges and new information.
I used the past papers available on the faculty website and wrote essays in timed conditions to answer them. I didn't have any tutors or anyone else mark these - I just got used to how much I could write in the time and I compared mine to the sample essays provided to see what kind of analysis and structure they wanted and tried to follow that.
Don't sit there in silence - even if you don't think you know the answer just talk them through your thought process and how you are trying to process the information you have. For law they don't expect much, if any, knowledge of law so as long as you can think through a problem logically and demonstrate that to them you should be fine.
Read at least some of the typically recommended books ('What about law?', 'The Rule of Law', 'Letters to a Law Student' etc.) as they provide a good insight into whether you actually want to study law as well as giving an idea of what kind of debates and issues there are about legal topics - this is useful in an interview or essay as it gives you some idea about where to start when faced with a question.