CPS - Case Study Assessment

So apologies for the delay in this blog. Today, as promised, I am talking about the case study assessment I attended on Monday 30 June 2014 for the Crown Prosecution Service. 

First off, to get to this point you had to submit an application which consisted of the usual information form filling bits and then three competency based questions. Following this there was supposed to be a Situational Judgment Test (very similar to the Government Legal Service which I interviewed for last year), however, the date for these tests to be emailed to successful candidates came and went. I eventually received an email to say they would not be conducting the SJT and instead would be moving to the next stage - the case study assessment. 

I was emailed the date and time of the assessment (non-negotiable - all the assessments took place on one day), as well as a link to the Code for Crown Prosecutors, and told to familiarise ourselves with this in particular part 4. My assessment was to be in London and on 30 June. 

I arrived just ten minutes before the time we had to be there, having got slightly lost (damn you Google maps!). The irony in this is that I had actually arrived in London over an hour early! Anyway, I certainly wasn't the last one there. We had our photos taken and given a Visitor badge and led into a room with about seven tables each with three places marked. I took a seat, we were given brief instructions and then the forty five minutes began. 

I was initially struck by the sheer amount of reading that was required in the forty five minutes. We had one witness statement, a narrative of what had happened, legal reference pages (burglary, perverting the course of justice and meaning of circumstantial evidence) and then extracts from the Code we were asked to read beforehand. 

There were two questions, basically asking us to assess the strength of the case using the Code tests and make conclusions. It was not horrifically bad but, as most people agreed, I could have done with another thirty minutes! I am guessing that is the point though - time pressures and all that jazz!

Afterwards the assistant sat and had a chat with us about the next steps etc. and we should hear the outcome within the next two weeks. She said that there were around twenty positions and that they were down to the find two hundred candidates (around 800 having applied). In the meantime I have an interview for a paralegal position. Things are definitely looking positive at the moment - life without the LPC aint so bad!