Legal Typing Test
Real contract clauses, pleadings and appellate text — with instant WPM and accuracy.
Type the documents legal support staff actually produce — contract clauses, pleadings, depositions and appellate reasoning. Built for legal secretaries, paralegals, legal transcriptionists and anyone facing a law firm typing assessment.
What you will actually be typing
Taken straight from the test. Read the third one and notice what your eyes do — the sentence keeps going long after an ordinary sentence would have stopped. That is the defining feature of legal text, and the next section measures it.
The plaintiff filed a complaint against the defendant in the Superior Court of the county. The complaint alleges that the defendant breached the terms of a written contract. The plaintiff seeks damages in an amount to be determined at trial. The defendant has been served with a copy of the summons and complaint and must respond within the time allowed by law. The complaint sets out the facts on which the claims are based and identifies the specific obligations that the defendant is alleged to have failed to perform. The plaintiff states that it has …
Indemnification. Each party shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the other party, its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or resulting from any breach of this Agreement, any negligent act or omission, or any violation of applicable law by the indemnifying party in connection with its performance under this Agreement. The indemnified party shall give the indemnifying party prompt written notice of any claim for which indemnification is sought, provided that the failure to give such …
The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur permits an inference of negligence where the instrumentality causing the injury was within the exclusive control of the defendant, the injury is of a kind that ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence, and the plaintiff did not contribute to the harm. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the application of this doctrine does not relieve the plaintiff of the ultimate burden of persuasion, and the defendant may rebut the inference by introducing evidence demonstrating the exercise of reasonable care under the totality of the circumstances. The doctrine is properly …
Who this test is for
Legal secretaries, paralegals, legal administrative assistants, legal transcriptionists, litigation support and eDiscovery staff, and law students who will spend the next few years producing documents. It is also useful preparation for the typing component that many firms include in hiring for support roles.
| Durations | 1, 3, 5 or 10 minutes |
|---|---|
| Target speed | 45 WPM net |
| Scoring formula | 5-character standard word; one standard word deducted per incorrect word |
| Backspace | Allowed (configurable) |
| Difficulty levels | Easy (plain-language documents) · Medium (contract boilerplate and filings) · Hard (appellate, trust, securities) |
| Passage corpus | 30 passages, 12,265 words, averaging 409 words per passage |
| Average sentence | 30 words (longest in corpus: 102) |
| Cost | Free, no login, results never leave your browser |
Why legal text types slowly — it is not the vocabulary
The usual explanation is that legal writing is full of long, difficult words. We tested that against our own corpora and it turns out to be wrong. Clinical prose on our medical typing test contains a higher proportion of long words than legal text does. Yet legal text is slower.
The difference is sentence length.
| Corpus | Avg sentence | Longest sentence | Words 10+ chars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal (this test) | 30 words | 102 words | 10.2% |
| Medical prose | 22 words | 48 words | 8.6% |
| General typing test | 13.5 words | 26 words | 12.8% |
A 102-word sentence with nested subordinate clauses does something specific to a typist. Fluent typing depends on reading a few words ahead of your fingers, and that works because ordinary sentences resolve quickly enough for you to hold the structure. When a sentence runs past fifty words and keeps qualifying itself — provided, however, that … notwithstanding the foregoing … except to the extent that — the structure stops fitting in working memory. You lose your place, glance back, and the rhythm breaks.
This is why the difficulty ladder here is built on clause depth rather than on rarer words. Easy passages average 22.4 words per sentence, Medium 29.7, and Hard 42.3. Practising the Hard set trains the specific skill of holding a long structure while typing it.
Typing requirements by legal support role
The same caveat applies here as everywhere on this site: no bar association or licensing body publishes a required typing speed. These are ranges commonly advertised by firms and agencies, presented with the reason each number lands where it does.
| Role | What you produce | Typical range | What actually constrains it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal secretary / legal administrative assistant | Correspondence, court filings, formatting, calendaring deadlines | 55–70 WPM | Document turnaround against filing deadlines is the real pressure |
| Paralegal | Drafting discovery, summarising depositions, cite-checking, memoranda | 45–60 WPM | Research and analysis dominate; typing is enabling rather than limiting |
| Legal transcriptionist | Hearings, dictated correspondence, recorded interviews | 65–80 WPM | Paid by volume, so speed converts directly into earnings |
| Litigation support / eDiscovery | Document coding, privilege logs, production tracking | 50–65 WPM | Alphanumeric accuracy on Bates numbers matters more than prose speed |
| Court reporter (stenographic) | Verbatim record of proceedings in real time | Not a QWERTY role | Uses a stenotype machine and chorded phonetic input — see below |
On the market itself: the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in paralegal and legal assistant employment between 2024 and 2034, on a base of roughly 376,200 jobs, with about 39,300 openings each year arising almost entirely from turnover rather than growth. Median pay was $61,010 in May 2024 [1].
If you are aiming for court reporting, this is not your path
These two careers get conflated constantly, so it is worth stating plainly. A court reporter does not use a QWERTY keyboard. They use a stenotype machine with around 22 keys, pressed in chords where a single stroke represents an entire syllable, word or phrase phonetically. It is closer to playing an instrument than to typing.
NCRA's Registered Professional Reporter credential requires passing three five-minute skills tests — literary at 180 words per minute, jury charge at 200, and testimony at 225 — each held to a 95% accuracy standard, alongside a written knowledge exam [2]. The testimony leg alone means transcribing over a thousand words in five minutes with correct punctuation and speaker attribution.
Those speeds are not achievable on a conventional keyboard by anyone, and no amount of practice here will approach them. If court reporting is your goal, you need a stenography program and a steno machine. This test is the right preparation for legal support roles — secretary, paralegal, transcriptionist, litigation support — where a standard keyboard is the tool.
Latin terms and the spellings that catch people
Legal Latin is a small, closed set. That is good news: unlike medical terminology, which runs to thousands of terms, the phrases you will actually type recur constantly and can be learned deliberately in an afternoon. The traps are consistent too — nearly all of them involve either word division or a vowel that English instinct wants to change.
| Term | Meaning | Common typing error |
|---|---|---|
| res ipsa loquitur | the thing speaks for itself | Three separate words; "ipsa" not "ispa" |
| voir dire | jury selection questioning | Two words; commonly typed as one |
| nunc pro tunc | now for then; retroactive effect | Three short words in sequence, easily elided |
| prima facie | on its face; at first sight | Two words; "facie" not "facia" |
| habeas corpus | produce the body | "Habeas" not "habeus" |
| stare decisis | stand by decided matters | Double vowel in "stare", not "stair" |
| forum non conveniens | inconvenient forum | "Conveniens" not "convenience" |
| quantum meruit | as much as deserved | "Meruit" not "merit" |
| nolo contendere | no contest plea | "Contendere" ends in -ere, not -er |
| amicus curiae | friend of the court | Plural is amici curiae, not amicuses |
A note on formatting: house style varies on whether Latin terms are italicised, and whether familiar ones such as per se or de facto are treated as ordinary English. Ask rather than guess — it is exactly the sort of detail a firm will have a settled view about.
Boilerplate is your biggest speed opportunity
Legal drafting is unusually repetitive at the phrase level, and that is a gift to anyone trying to get faster. The same clauses appear across nearly every commercial agreement with only modest variation: severability, entire agreement, force majeure, notices, governing law, assignment, limitation of liability, indemnification.
The skill worth building is treating these as single motor units rather than as sequences of words. "In consideration of the mutual covenants and promises set forth herein" is eleven words, but it can become one gesture. So can "the parties hereby irrevocably consent to the exclusive jurisdiction", and "such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper". The Medium passages in this test are built almost entirely from these recurring blocks for that reason.
Beyond practice, the natural extension is a text expander. Legal work is close to the ideal use case: map your signature blocks, certificates of service, standard recitals and court captions to short triggers and a large share of daily keystrokes disappears. It also enforces consistency with house style, which matters more in a firm than most people expect.
The hardest terms in this test
Extracted from the Hard passage set rather than chosen by hand — the longest distinct terms in the corpus, and a disproportionate share of the corrections people make here.
- reasonable-consumer
- misrepresentations
- misrepresentation
- unenforceability
- administratively
- non-infringement
- well-established
- representations
- notwithstanding
- representatives
- contemporaneous
- acknowledgement
- anti-assignment
- confidentiality
- correspondingly
- indemnification
- instrumentality
- jurisprudential
- merchantability
- proportionately
- administration
- enforceability
- representation
- constitutional
- individualized
- representative
- understandings
- authorizations
- geographically
- organizational
A four-week plan for legal typing
Around 20 minutes a day. Week one is about stamina across long sentences rather than speed, because that is the constraint the measurements above identified.
| Week | Focus | What to run | Move on when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Long-sentence stamina | Easy passages, 5-minute runs, reading one clause ahead | 95% accuracy without losing your place mid-sentence |
| Week 2 | Boilerplate rhythm | Medium passages — indemnity, limitation, governing law | Recurring phrases typed as units rather than word by word |
| Week 3 | Latin and defined terms | Hard passages, plus drilling the Latin list on this page | No corrections on any term in the list above |
| Week 4 | Sustained drafting | Hard passages, 10-minute runs, one attempt per session | 55+ WPM net at 96%+ accuracy for the full 10 minutes |
If litigation support is your target, add the alphanumeric test — Bates numbers and exhibit identifiers are pure alphanumeric strings where a transposition cannot be caught by reading. For general technique that applies to any text, see how to type faster.
Before a law firm typing assessment: a self-check
- You clear the advertised speed for your target role on Hard passages, not just Easy.
- Accuracy holds above 96% across a full 10-minute run.
- You can type a 50-word sentence without losing your place or glancing back.
- Every Latin term in the table above types cleanly, first time.
- The common boilerplate clauses come out as units rather than word by word.
- You have run at least one session with backspace disabled, to see your true first-pass accuracy.
- If the role involves discovery work, alphanumeric strings are as fast as prose.
Frequently asked questions
What typing speed do law firms actually require?
It varies by role, and the spread is wide. Legal secretaries are commonly asked for 55 to 70 WPM because they are producing documents against filing deadlines. Paralegals are often assessed lower, around 45 to 60, because their work is dominated by research and analysis rather than document production. Legal transcriptionists face the highest expectations, frequently 65 to 80, since they are usually paid by volume. No bar association or licensing body publishes a required figure — these are employer conventions.
Why does legal text feel slower to type than other technical writing?
Sentence length, not vocabulary. We measured our own corpora: legal passages average 30 words per sentence with a longest of 102 words, against 13.5 words for general typing-test prose. Clinical text is actually denser in long words than legal text is, yet it reads faster, because its sentences end. A 102-word sentence with nested subordinate clauses forces you to hold the structure in working memory while your hands are still moving.
Is this test useful for court reporting?
No, and this is worth being direct about because the two get conflated constantly. Court reporters do not use a QWERTY keyboard. They use a stenotype machine with roughly 22 keys, pressed in chords that represent whole syllables and phrases phonetically. NCRA certification requires passing three five-minute skills tests — literary at 180 WPM, jury charge at 200, and testimony at 225 — each at 95% accuracy [2]. Those figures are unreachable on a conventional keyboard and are not what this test measures.
What kind of legal text is in this test?
Three graded levels drawn from real document categories. Easy passages are plain-language agreements, complaints, declarations, leases and wills. Medium passages are contract boilerplate and litigation filings — indemnification, limitation of liability, governing law, motions, deposition transcripts. Hard passages are appellate reasoning, trust instruments, class certification argument and securities pleadings. The corpus holds 30 passages and 12,265 words in total.
Why does the test include so much repetitive boilerplate?
Because the job does, and that is an advantage rather than a chore. Severability, entire-agreement, force-majeure and notice clauses recur across almost every commercial contract with only modest variation. Once you can type "the parties hereby irrevocably consent to the exclusive jurisdiction" as a single motor unit rather than as eleven separate words, a large share of routine drafting becomes substantially faster. That is exactly the muscle the Medium passages build.
How much does accuracy matter compared with speed in legal work?
More than in most fields, because legal documents are read adversarially. A misplaced decimal in a payment term, a dropped "not" in a covenant, or a transposed date in a limitation period can change the meaning of an obligation and will be found by someone whose job is to find it. Firms generally weight accuracy above raw speed in pre-employment testing for exactly this reason, and a candidate at 55 WPM with 98% accuracy usually presents better than one at 70 WPM with 92%.
What is a Bates number and why does it matter for typing?
A Bates number is the sequential identifier stamped on each page of a document production, typically a prefix followed by a zero-padded number such as ABC-0001427. They appear constantly in discovery work, privilege logs and deposition exhibits. They are also alphanumeric strings with no linguistic redundancy, which means a transposition cannot be caught by reading — it can only be caught by checking. If your target role is litigation support, drill numbers deliberately.
Do I need legal training to take this test?
No. The test measures how accurately and quickly you reproduce text on screen; you do not need to understand what promissory estoppel is in order to type the words. That said, the Latin table and the boilerplate section on this page will make the passages noticeably easier, because recognising a phrase as a familiar unit is what lets you type it without pausing to decode it letter by letter.
Is the legal support job market still growing?
It is essentially flat rather than growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in paralegal and legal assistant employment from 2024 to 2034, with roughly 376,200 people employed in the occupation [1]. Even so, about 39,300 openings are projected each year, almost entirely from people moving between occupations or retiring. The median annual wage was $61,010 in May 2024.
Should I learn a text expander for legal work?
Yes, and earlier than most people do. Legal drafting is unusually repetitive at the phrase level, which makes it the ideal candidate for expansion. Mapping the fifty or so clauses and phrases your practice area repeats — signature blocks, certificates of service, standard recitals, court captions — removes a substantial share of daily keystrokes. It also improves consistency, which matters when a firm has house style rules about how those blocks are worded.
Can I use backspace during the legal typing test?
Yes, backspace is enabled by default and can be switched off in the settings. Leaving it on mirrors real drafting work. Turning it off is a useful diagnostic once a week: it shows you how much of your apparent accuracy depends on correcting as you go, which is worth knowing before an assessment that may not permit corrections.
Is this legal typing test free?
Yes, entirely. No login, no signup, no limit on attempts. Scoring happens in your browser and results are never uploaded to our servers.
Sources
Sentence-length and word-density figures are computed from our own corpora and can be regenerated with scripts/corpus-stats.mjs. External claims are cited below. Typing speed ranges by role are drawn from commonly advertised positions and are labelled as such — no bar association or licensing body publishes a required figure.
- Occupational Outlook Handbook: Paralegals and Legal AssistantsU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · link checked 21 Aug 2026
- Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) certification requirementsNational Court Reporters Association (NCRA) · link checked 21 Aug 2026
- Occupational Outlook Handbook: Legal OccupationsU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · link checked 21 Aug 2026