Applying rules, clerical checking and tables on the court officer exam

Three areas, one habit

After the memory section and the reading passages, the rest of the court officer exam asks you to follow written procedures, compare entries, and combine figures from tables. None of it needs outside knowledge. All of it punishes rushing.

Applying rules

You are given a set of rules, then a situation, and asked what the officer should do. The trap is answering from common sense or from what a real officer might do. The question only asks what these rules require.

• Find the rule that matches the situation before you read the options.
• Watch for conditions: "unless", "only if", "before". The wrong options often apply the right rule while ignoring its condition.
• When two rules seem to apply, check whether one is written as the exception to the other.

Clerical checking

Two records that should match, with small differences hidden in them: a transposed digit, a letter changed in a name, a date a day off. Compare field by field, not line by line. Read numbers in small groups. Most mistakes here come from the eye filling in what it expects.

Record keeping from tables

These questions give you court tables and ask you to total, compare or pick out figures. Calculators are not allowed, so the arithmetic is by hand. Two habits help:

• Check the row and column headings before reading any number. Many wrong answers use the right figure from the wrong row.
• Where a table has totals, use them to check your own sums.

Time

With the memory portion taken out, the exam allows a little over two and a half minutes a question. Spend that time here. A wrong answer costs nothing beyond the mark, but a careless one costs the mark.