What the report shows after every practice exam

Every report opens with a ranked list of what to fix first, ordered by the marks at stake on your paper, not by your lowest percentage. A weak spot in a small section can matter less than a near-miss in a big one. Here is how the list reads for our fictional candidate after Barrister Mock Exam D, scored at 69%:

1. 1. Criminal Law, 60%

   17 marks lost here, more than in any other area, so it comes first.

2. 2. What you can't see: 9 marks

   9 questions you answered quickly, didn't flag, and got wrong. These are the ones where you were sure, which makes them invisible to your own review. They are often the fastest marks to recover: you don't need new material, you need to correct an idea you already hold.

3. 3. Your Criminal Law losses cluster in one skill

   On Problem/Issue Identification, Analysis and Assessment questions in Criminal Law you scored 48%, against 71% on Knowledge of the Law. It's that side of Criminal Law that needs the work, not the whole subject.

4. 4. Your changes cost you marks on this sitting

   You changed 12 answers: 7 went from right to wrong and only 3 the other way. 4 marks lost on changes alone, most of them in the last hour.

5. 5. Your accuracy dropped as the exam went on

   78% on the first quarter of the paper, 63% on the last. The knowledge was there earlier in the day; the last hour is costing you marks.

Demo account, fictional results.

Where a finding rests on particular questions, it links straight to them, so your review starts where the marks are.

Your answers are sorted two ways: by the lawyering competencies the Law Society publishes, and by area of law. Then the two are crossed. You can know a subject well and still lose marks whenever a question asks you to identify and analyse an issue rather than recall a rule, and the report shows which of those is happening, in which subject.

Once enough candidates have sat a paper, each category shows the peer average beside your score, so you know whether a 60% is a problem or a hard section. Where a category holds only a few questions, the report still shows your figure and says plainly that a few questions can swing it.

Every answer is timed, so the report charts your pace and your accuracy across the whole paper, twenty questions at a time, against an even pace for four and a half hours. It shows whether you started too slowly and rushed the end, whether your accuracy held, whether your slowest or your quickest answers were the weakest, and whether time ran out before the last questions were even on your screen.

It reads your flags too. If you scored much lower on the questions you flagged, your sense of doubt is well tuned and your review should start there. If flagged and unflagged scored the same, your mistakes are landing where you felt sure. And it tells you whether your wrong answers were near-misses, the same tempting option most candidates who miss that question choose, or scattered across the options, which points to unfamiliar material rather than fine distinctions.

Folk wisdom says to trust your first instinct. Your own sitting can settle it: the report counts every answer you changed and whether the change earned or cost the mark, in paper order, so you can see whether your second looks are helping.

A weakness on one paper might be a bad morning. The same weakness on a second, separately written paper is real, and the report tells you which of yours is which. Sit the same paper again and anything you miss both times is flagged. Your progress page follows your stamina across sittings: how far your accuracy falls from the first quarter of a paper to the last, and whether that gap is closing.

It will not tell you whether you would pass. The Law Society publishes no pass mark, so any verdict would be invented. The peer average stays hidden until enough people have sat a paper for it to mean something and for no one's result to be identifiable. And a swing between two different papers is never dressed up as progress.