What happens in a Cambridge Law interview?

Will you be interviewed?

No one is offered a place to read Law at Cambridge without an interview. Everyone who is made an offer will have been interviewed, although not everyone who applies is invited.^[9] The University publishes no figure for the share of Law applicants who are interviewed. Note also that the LNAT is not sat at interview: you take it at a test centre by 15 October 2026, and it is used, along with the rest of your application, to decide who is invited.^[10]

If you are invited, this is what you should expect:

1. Most applicants have one or two interviews, although some have three or four.^[9] For Law the number varies from college to college.^[8] King’s and St John’s each say they usually hold two.^[14][15]
2. There is no written test on the day. The LNAT is the only admission test for Law, and you sit it at a test centre before the colleges shortlist,^[5] by 15 October 2026 for 2027 entry.^[10] The Cambridge Law Test, the essay paper candidates used to sit when they came for interview, is no longer used: the LNAT replaced it from the autumn 2022 admissions cycle, for 2023 entry.^[13]
3. Interviews are online or in person, depending on the college. For 2027 entry, by our count of the University’s table, 17 of the 29 colleges interview Law applicants online and 4 interview everyone in person. Another 7 see UK-based applicants in person, and Gonville and Caius lets applicants in the UK and Ireland choose.^[9]
4. A subject interview usually has two or three interviewers, and you may be given material to read beforehand.^[9]

Most applicants’ interviews last 35 minutes to an hour in total;^[9] St John’s says each of its two generally lasts 15 to 30 minutes.^[15] Tutors do not tell you your scores. For 2027 entry the main interview period runs from 7 to 18 December 2026, and most invitations are sent in November.^[9] The winter pool follows in January, and applicants interviewed in December are told the outcome on 27 January 2027.^[12]

What happens at the interviews?

There is no written test on interview day, because the LNAT is sat weeks earlier at a test centre. The interview stage consists of the interviews themselves, and how many you have, how long they last and what they cover vary from college to college.^[8] King’s and St John’s each describe two interviews for Law,^[14][15] and that is the pattern we set out below.

The LNAT comes first

You sit the LNAT at a test centre before the colleges shortlist. In the main October round for 2027 entry it must be taken by 15 October 2026. It lasts 2 hours 15 minutes: 42 multiple-choice questions on 12 passages in 95 minutes, then one essay from a choice of three in 40 minutes. Cambridge uses both sections and marks the essay itself. The result is used, along with everything else in your application, to decide who is invited to interview, and again in choosing between applicants.^[10] There is no pass mark, but the University says a strong performance is usually needed to get through to interview.^[5]

Older guides describe the Cambridge Law Test, an essay paper that candidates sat when they came for interview. It is no longer used: the LNAT replaced it from the autumn 2022 admissions cycle, for 2023 entry,^[13] and the Faculty no longer publishes specimen papers for it. The interviews themselves assume no legal knowledge, since the Faculty says you will not be required to have any prior knowledge of law.^[8]

The first interview: your application

The first interview usually focuses on your application: the subjects you mentioned in your personal statement, your school’s reference and your wider reading. For example, you might be asked:

• “You mentioned [book] in your statement. Tell me what its central argument is, and where you think it’s wrong.”
• “Why Law and not [one of your other A-levels]?”
• “You wrote about [topic]. Suppose I disagree. How would you defend your position?”

The tutor is testing how you think on your feet, how you respond to challenge and how well you can defend a view. Your knowledge of law is not being tested.

The second interview: a legal or ethical problem

The second interview usually focuses on a concrete legal or ethical problem. Tutors may give you a short text or a short set of rules to read beforehand and then discuss it with you, or the question may be entirely spoken. For example:

• “Here is a short statute. How would you apply it to this case?”
• “Suppose Parliament passed a law that …. Is that law? Should it be?”
• “What’s wrong with this argument?”

Here tutors are looking for candidates who can work with unfamiliar material, distinguish between similar cases and notice where the wording is ambiguous.

How do the colleges differ?

Some colleges say more about their interviews than others:

• Trinity does not say how many interviews it holds or how long they last, only that candidates are interviewed by members of its law teaching staff.^[18] For 2027 entry it interviews UK-based applicants in person.^[9]
• Gonville and Caius says each Law candidate generally has two interviews of 30 minutes each.^[19]
• Hughes Hall, St Edmund’s and Wolfson (the three colleges for students aged 21 or over)^[17] interview a different group of applicants. All three interview Law applicants online for 2027 entry, and mature applicants who apply to them in the January round are interviewed from mid-March to early April.^[9]
• King’s says it typically holds two interviews for Law. For one of them you read a short factual scenario and a set of legal provisions beforehand; the other has no reading.^[14]

In general, we recommend checking the University’s table of interview formats and your college’s own Law page, and then preparing for two interviews as your baseline. There is no written test to prepare for at this stage.

What are tutors looking for?

Neither the University nor the Faculty publishes a scoring rubric for Law interviews. The Faculty says interviewers are interested in your own ideas and thought processes: whether you can form and defend a logical argument, recognise counter-arguments and explain why your view has changed when you are given new information.^[8] The University says interviews help it assess, among other things, your ability to think critically and independently and your curiosity and openness to new ideas.^[9]

To help you prepare, we have grouped that guidance under five headings. Note that these headings are our own; Cambridge has no such scheme.

None of these is decisive on its own. Cambridge says admissions tutors consider all the information available together before making any decision.^[11]

How are interviews scored?

Cambridge does not publish an interview scale, but two colleges have released their scores. St John’s gave the average interview score of everyone it interviewed and of those it made offers to, for 2022 and 2023 entry.^[20]

For 2023 entry the average was 6.6 for everyone interviewed (with scores from 4 to 10) and 7.9 for those offered a place (from 6 to 10). For 2022 entry the figures were 6.3 (from 3 to 10) and 7.9 (from 6 to 10).^[20] The College gives no scale for these scores, although the highest score in every group was 10.

Trinity’s reply for 2026 entry gives four interview marks for each of the 12 Law students who started in October 2026. The marks run from 6.5 to 9, and each student’s average is between 7.0 and 8.5.^[21] Trinity does not say what the scale is or what the four marks represent, and it keeps no marks for candidates who were not admitted. Christ’s gave a range of 5 to 10 for its two 2026 entrants.^[22]

So what can you take from this? Not every interview has to go perfectly. Christ’s range means that at least one mark of 5 went to a student who was admitted, and at St John’s the lowest score among those offered a place was 6 in both years. What appears to matter is your performance across the interviews as a whole, together with the rest of your application.

What kinds of question might you be asked?

Cambridge interview questions tend to fall into three broad kinds. The lines between them are blurred, since many questions cross over, but knowing the three kinds helps you prepare for each.

Applying rules to facts

The tutor gives you a short factual scenario and a small set of rules, and you must apply the rules to the facts. For example, consider the question:

Questions about principle

The tutor asks an open question about the law itself, or about a moral or political principle connected to law. For example:

• “Should the law ever require you to break a promise?”
• “Is it ever right to disobey the law?”
• “Why do we have judges and not juries deciding civil cases?”
• “Is there a moral difference between killing and letting die?”

Here tutors are testing how you handle abstract ideas, whether you can find concrete examples to test your own view, and whether you can keep two competing principles in mind at once.

Questions about your application

The tutor reads back something from your application and asks you to expand on it or defend it. For example:

• “You wrote about Hart’s primary and secondary rules. Why is that distinction interesting?”
• “Your reference says you ran the school debating society. Tell me about a debate where you were wrong.”
• “You mentioned reading [X]. What was its weakest argument?”

The aim is to tell apart candidates who have read what they say they have read from those who have only skimmed it, so tutors will ask what you thought of the book as well as what it says.

What happens if your college cannot offer you a place?

If your college does not offer you a place but rates you highly, it can put you in the winter pool, and another college can then offer you a place. In the 2025 cycle, for entry in October 2025, about a fifth of all Cambridge offers (953 of 4,893, or 19.5%) were made through the winter pool by a college other than the one the applicant had applied to.^[1] The annual reports give no figure for Law alone.

As you can see, this share has been between 16% and 21% in every year since 2015.^[1][23] There are two consequences for you:

1. Your choice of college matters less than it seems. The pool evens out much of the difference in the number of applications each college receives. A strong candidate at a heavily oversubscribed college (Downing, Trinity, Gonville and Caius) can be pooled and offered a place by another college. Note, however, that the pool is not a safety net: across all courses, around 18% of the applications received in October 2025, for 2026 entry, were placed in the winter pool, and about one in four of those pooled applicants (1,060) were offered a place by a different college.^[11]
2. Open applications are treated the same way. If you make an open application (naming no college), you are allocated after the closing date to a college that has received fewer applications per place for your course. Cambridge says colleges treat open applicants in the same way as those who apply directly.^[16]

This is also why the offer rates of individual colleges can mislead. A candidate turned down by Downing may receive an offer from Pembroke through the pool. What decides the outcome is your whole application, including your academic record, your LNAT result and your interviews, whichever college you first named.

How should you prepare for the interview?

The advice below draws on Cambridge’s admissions guidance, tutors’ published comments and applicants’ reports. We recommend starting it as soon as you have sat the LNAT, since invitations are usually sent in November.^[9]

1. Read your personal statement again in the week before. Every book or topic you mentioned may come up. If you wrote about Hart, re-read the chapter; if you cited a case, make sure you can summarise it.
2. Practise talking about a topic out loud for two minutes. The LNAT is written and the interview is spoken. Many candidates think clearly only when writing, so it is worth practising thinking clearly while you speak.
3. Ask a teacher (or anyone) to challenge you on a topic. Get used to being shown that you are wrong, and to changing your view when you are. This is what tutors want to see, and it is much easier in the interview if you have practised it beforehand.
4. Do not pretend to know what you do not know. Tutors notice at once. “I haven’t read that, but my reasoning would be …” is a much better answer than a confident guess.
5. Take a few seconds before you answer. Tutors expect this, and silence while you think is fine. Talking to fill the silence, on the other hand, usually leads to a muddled answer.
6. Read the news every week. Tutors often ask about a recent legal or political development. The Economist, the FT, the LRB or a serious podcast such as “The Rest is Politics: Leading” will give you material.
7. Practise with unseen material. There is no written test at interview, but you may be given something to read first (King’s sets a short factual scenario and a set of legal provisions, and St John’s an unseen legal text).^[14][15] Take a short statute or case extract, give yourself a few minutes with it, then explain aloud how it applies to a set of facts.
8. Treat the interview as a discussion. The best candidates treat it as a conversation about ideas with someone who may be teaching them for the next three years.