How to Deliver a Presentation at a Law Firm Assessment Centre

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Almost every law firm assessment centre includes a presentation element. Sometimes it sits within the group exercise itself, where the team presents its findings at the end of the task. Sometimes it is a separate standalone exercise where each candidate presents individually. Either way, the presentation is one of the few moments in an assessment day where the assessors are watching you perform in real time, without the cover of a group dynamic or a written response. How you handle it matters, and how you handle it can be prepared for.

What the presentation is and why it is there

In most group exercise scenarios, the presentation serves as the output of the team's work. You have been given a task, worked through it as a group, and now you are presenting your findings and recommendations to the assessors, who in most cases will be playing the role of the client.

Think about that framing carefully. You are not presenting to a panel of judges who are looking for reasons to mark you down. You are presenting to a client who has asked for your advice. How would you present your findings to a client in a real professional context? With confidence, with clarity, with direct eye contact, and with a genuine attempt to explain your reasoning rather than just deliver a list of conclusions. That is the standard you should be aiming for.

The assessors watching are not all specialist recruiters. It is quite likely that some of them are partners or associates who have been trained to run assessment days but who are not expert evaluators. They will have a scoring framework in front of them and they will follow it fairly strictly. This is actually reassuring rather than intimidating: the things being assessed are consistent and predictable, and as long as you understand what those things are, you can prepare for them.

How sections get allocated and what to do about it

In most group exercise presentations, the team will need to divide the presentation into sections, with each candidate taking a portion. This allocation process is itself observed. How you approach it, whether you contribute to structuring the presentation clearly, whether you advocate for yourself appropriately, and whether you listen to what others are saying in the process, all of this is part of the assessment.

The practical challenge is that in a group of six or eight candidates, there will often be a scramble for the sections that feel most comfortable or most impressive. Some candidates will try to claim the most substantive sections. Others will end up with the conclusion or a thinner section by default.

A few things are worth knowing about this.

First, try to take a section you are comfortable with and know well. This sounds obvious but it matters more than candidates sometimes appreciate. A confident, fluent delivery of a straightforward section will outscore a hesitant, uncertain delivery of a more impressive section. You are only going to have a few minutes to present. Use them on material you can speak to with genuine confidence.

Second, if you end up with a section that is not your strong suit, say something. The way to do this is not to be difficult or to hold up the process, but to make a specific, positive case for a different allocation: "I'm happy to take that section, but I've been following the IP issues in this quite closely and I think I could add more in that part, if that works for the group?" That kind of polite, reasoned self-advocacy is not only acceptable, it is the kind of professional conduct that assessors notice positively.

Third, avoid the conclusion section if you can. The conclusion is typically the thinnest section because it pulls together other people's ideas rather than presenting your own. If the allotted time has been consumed by earlier sections, the conclusion is often the one that gets cut short. You want enough time and enough substance to give the assessors something to score.

The dry run: use it better than everyone else will

In the few minutes before the presentation, the group will typically have a brief moment to run through each person's section before presenting to the assessors. This almost always descends into everyone scribbling final notes on their own section while someone else speaks, with nobody really listening.

This is your opportunity.

Put your notes down and actually listen to your colleagues' sections. Offer a thought, a piece of feedback, or an observation where you genuinely have one. "That's a strong point on the conditions precedent, worth leading with it rather than building to it" takes ten seconds to say and demonstrates that you are still operating as a team member, still contributing, and still paying attention, right up until the moment the presentation begins.

The assessors may or may not be in the room during this stage. Assume they are.

Delivering your section

You will probably have between two and four minutes for your section of the presentation. That is not a long time, and the temptation is to fill it as densely as possible with every point you have prepared. Resist that temptation.

A presentation is not a written exercise delivered verbally. The assessors are not looking for the maximum number of points in the minimum number of minutes. They are looking for whether you can communicate clearly, whether you can engage an audience, and whether you present yourself as someone a client would trust to deliver advice.

The practical difference between a presentation and a recitation is eye contact. Looking at your notes while you speak sends a signal that you have memorised material but are not truly in command of it. Looking at your audience while you speak, referring to notes briefly and returning to the room, sends a different signal: that you understand what you are saying and can deliver it naturally. This is a learnable skill and it comes from knowing your material well enough not to depend on the notes.

Pace is the other variable that nerves affect most visibly. When candidates are nervous they speak faster, which makes them harder to follow and makes their delivery seem less confident than it is. The counter-intuitive instruction is to slow down: pause between points, let each idea land before moving to the next, and resist the urge to fill every moment with words. A pause of one or two seconds between sections feels much longer in your head than it appears to an audience.

The assessors are human beings who understand that you are nervous. They are not looking for perfection. They are looking for someone who can hold themselves together under pressure, communicate clearly, and present themselves professionally. A slightly imperfect delivery of a well-structured section beats a polished delivery of something you clearly do not understand.

The Q&A

At the end of the presentation, assessors will often ask questions. Sometimes these are directed at individual candidates. More often they are thrown to the group, and the assessors observe who answers, how quickly, and how well.

This is a genuine scoring opportunity that many candidates miss because they are relieved the presentation is over and mentally switch off. Do not do this.

If a question is thrown to the group and nobody else is moving to answer it, that is your moment. Even a partial answer, or a response that frames the question before offering a view, is better than silence. The assessors are watching for exactly this: who engages proactively when the pressure of the formal presentation is off.

The types of questions you are likely to face in the Q&A fall into three categories.

The first is reflective: "If you could do this again, is there anything you would do differently?" This is not a trap. It is an invitation to demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to evaluate your own work honestly. The candidates who answer this well are the ones who identify something genuine: a point they could have developed further, an issue they spotted late, a section of the presentation that could have been clearer. The candidates who answer it poorly are the ones who say "I think we covered everything well" or who offer a reflection so minor it signals they have not genuinely engaged with the question.

The second is technical: "Can you explain further why you recommended X rather than Y?" This is the assessor testing whether your recommendation was reasoned or whether it was the first option you thought of. Give the reasoning. The analysis behind the conclusion is what the question is really asking for.

The third is a deliberate challenge: "But surely the better approach here would be to do Z?" This can feel confrontational but it is almost always a test of whether you can defend your position professionally rather than either capitulating immediately or becoming defensive. Treat it as you would treat a client who questions your advice: acknowledge the point, explain your reasoning for the approach you recommended, and be genuinely open to updating your view if the challenge has real force. "That's an interesting point, and I think the reason we went with X is because of Y, though I can see the logic in Z if the situation were slightly different" is a more impressive response than either "you're right, we should have done Z" or "no, X is definitely the correct approach."

Do not treat Q&A questions as arguments to be won. Treat them as conversations to be had.

What assessors who are not recruiters are looking for

One important thing to understand about the assessment day is that the people observing you are not all trained recruitment professionals. Partners and associates attending assessment days are given scoring frameworks and told to follow them, but they are bringing the perspective of practitioners rather than specialists in assessment. This affects what tends to stand out.

What practitioners notice is whether you sound like someone they would want in their team. That means: do you communicate clearly, do you listen as well as you speak, do you hold yourself together when things are uncertain, and do you engage with problems in a way that suggests genuine understanding rather than surface knowledge?

The scoring framework they have been given will capture the specific competencies the firm is assessing, but the impression they form sits alongside the scores. Both matter.

Commercial awareness: the preparation that actually helps

Unlike the group exercise task itself, which you cannot prepare for in content terms because you do not know the topic in advance, there is one dimension of presentation performance that preparation directly improves: commercial awareness.

If the task involves a business scenario, a client problem, or an issue with regulatory or market dimensions, the candidates who speak about these issues with genuine commercial depth stand out clearly from those who identify the same issues but discuss them at a surface level. This comes from being genuinely engaged with what is happening in the world commercially, not from last-minute research.

Being commercially aware at an assessment centre means being in touch with what is happening across business and law in the weeks and months before you attend. Not necessarily knowing every deal or every regulatory development, but having enough context that when a relevant issue appears in a case study or group exercise, you can speak about it with genuine understanding rather than recalling a headline.

For a structured approach to building this kind of commercial fluency, see our commercial awareness guide and the Commercial Awareness Starter Pack.

Common mistakes

Choosing a section of the presentation you are not comfortable with because it seemed more impressive, and then delivering it poorly.

Reading directly from notes throughout without engaging the audience with eye contact.

Speaking too quickly because of nerves, which makes the delivery harder to follow and signals less confidence than a slower, more deliberate pace would.

Mentally switching off after the presentation is over and missing the Q&A as a scoring opportunity.

Capitulating immediately when challenged in the Q&A rather than defending a reasoned position professionally.

Treating the conclusion section as a safe choice. It is the most likely to be cut short and gives you the least material to demonstrate your own thinking.

Want to prepare for the full assessment centre?

The Future Trainee Academy includes a dedicated section on assessment centre presentations from the former Mayer Brown recruiter whose guidance informed this article, covering how to structure your section, how to deliver under pressure, and how to handle Q&A professionally. Free to access.

For broader preparation covering competency questions, commercial awareness, situational judgment, and everything else you will face across an assessment day, the Interview Question Bank has 80+ real questions used by leading firms.