A Literature Analysis of the Inventory of Legal Knowledge

Abstract

The Inventory of Legal Knowledge (ILK) is a feigning measure of growing usage, familiarity, and controversy in research and practice. A comprehensive review of a smaller literature base yields recurring themes in the ILK literature. There were mentions of feigned lack of legal knowledge tending to associate with feigned psychopathology, concerns about false positives at or around the ILK cutoff score, and potential complications when the ILK is administered to individuals with very low intellectual functioning. Possible underestimation of both false positives and false negatives suggests there may be a need for a revised edition of the measure, further item discrimination, and a meta-analysis of extant research studies with similar designs. An ILK-2 with required user training, as well as a lower cutoff score, an indeterminate range, and weighting of scores in association with criminal history may increase the measure's validity, robustness, and utility in larger assessments of malingering.

Keywords: ILK; Inventory of Legal Knowledge; competence to stand trial; feigning; forensic; malingering.