What the peer average can tell you, and what it can't

Once enough candidates have sat a paper, your report marks where the field lands in each category next to where you did. It appears only when the pool behind it is big enough to mean something, which is also why a brand-new paper shows your own numbers alone for a while: an average of three people is a coincidence, not a benchmark.

Here is what that marker is for, and what it is not.

The one decision it improves

A peer average answers a question your own score cannot: is this category hard, or is it hard for me?

Say you scored 58% in one area. On its own that reads as a weakness. If the field is at 61%, what you have found is a difficult category, and grinding it for a week may buy you less than you think, because the questions themselves are where the difficulty lives. If the field is at 78%, you have found a genuine personal gap, and it is exactly where study pays best, because these are marks most people are collecting and you are leaving behind.

Same score, opposite conclusions. That is the entire job of the peer marker: it separates "hard" from "hard for me" so your study hours go where they are unusual, not just where the number is low.

The two questions it cannot answer

First: will I pass? The Law Society sets a single overall passing mark and does not publish it, and it is a fixed standard, not a curve; the Law Society says explicitly that only a candidate's performance against that standard determines the result. Beating the average of a practice cohort is not a licensing outcome. Treat every comparison as information about your preparation, never as a forecast.

Second: am I done? A category where you beat the field is still a category with marks in it. The average is context for prioritising, not a finish line, and "above average everywhere" has never been the goal of anyone's licensing year. The goal is enough correct answers on one specific morning.

Use the marker the way our tutors do when they read a report with a student: find the categories where your gap from the field is widest, ask why those and not others, and spend the week there. Then let the next sitting check your work.