IA Psych Juris study plan

Map each landmark U.S. Supreme Court and appellate decision (Dusky, Jackson, Drope, Godinez, Indiana v. Edwards, Miranda, competence-to-proceed doctrines) to the specific legal question it settled and the standard it created.

Write a one-page glossary distinguishing legal terms of art (adjudicative competence, mens rea, insanity, diminished capacity, automatism, competence to proceed) so you can use them precisely in vignettes.

Compare the four insanity tests (M'Naghten, irresistible impulse, Durham, ALI/Brawner) and the burden-of-proof placement rules across jurisdictions on a single comparison table.

Explain the difference between competence and criminal responsibility in writing, using one hypothetical defendant evaluated under both frameworks.

Trace the flow of a forensic evaluation from referral question through court order, evaluation, report, and testimony, noting which party holds privilege at each step.

Draft a structured competency report outline that answers Dusky's three prongs (understanding, appreciation, reasoning/assistance) with behaviorally anchored indicators for each.

Contrast the instruments most used in competency work (ECST-R, MacCAT-CA, GCCT, CAST-MR) on population, format, prongs covered, and administration time, and state when each is inappropriate.

Identify the limits of psychological testing for competency opinions, including why no test score alone establishes the legal conclusion.

Practice writing three recommendation options for a borderline competency case (competent, incompetent with restoration, incompetent and not restorable) with the reasoning that supports each.

Summarize the constitutional limits on medicating a defendant to restore competence (Sell v. United States factors) and how those factors shape your evaluation questions.

Compare the major violence risk instruments (HCR-20v3, PCL-R/PCL:SV, VRAG-R, SORAG, START, LSI-R) on structure, actuarial versus structured professional judgment, populations validated, and known limits.

Explain base rates, sensitivity, specificity, AUC, and positive predictive value well enough to critique how a risk instrument's output is described in a report and on the stand.

Build a table of static, stable-dynamic, and acute-dynamic risk factors and map each to a plausible management response.

Outline a risk management plan for one hypothetical case that links each identified factor to a monitoring or intervention step and a review timeline.

Identify common errors in risk testimony (overclaiming precision, ignoring base rates, conflating risk level with imminence) and prepare the rebuttal language you would use to correct each.

Compare the APA Ethics Code, Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology, and AAPL practice guidelines on where they overlap and where forensic roles impose stricter duties than clinical ones.

Analyze the dual-role problem: list the specific harms of treating therapist testimony, and write the informed-consent language you would use when a court orders an evaluation of your own patient.

Apply the limits of confidentiality in forensic contexts (no therapeutic privilege, court-ordered disclosure, Tarasoff-type duties) to three short vignettes.

Build a test-selection decision tree that starts from the referral question and ends with a defensible instrument choice, including a rule for when to use no test at all.

Evaluate test appropriateness criteria (normative fit, population validity, base rate, cultural and linguistic fairness, Daubert/Frye admissibility) and apply them to reject two plausible-but-wrong instruments for a given case.

Integrate risk and competency reasoning in a single case: assess whether a defendant's risk profile affects the restoration plan and the least-restrictive setting recommendation.

Draft direct-examination answers for your risk opinion that stay within the data, and prepare cross-examination responses to three challenges (small sample, absent norms, clinical override).

Explain how protective factors and desistance research should temper static-score-driven conclusions in a report.

Rehearse a 10-minute mock testimony on a competency or risk opinion, record it, and score yourself against a checklist of clarity, grounding in data, and acknowledgment of limits.

Distinguish the roles of evaluator, consultant, and expert witness, and identify when accepting a referral would create an impermissible role conflict.

Compare actuarial sexual recidivism instruments (Static-99R, Static-2002R, STABLE-2007/ACUTE-2007, VRS-SO, SVR-20v2) on constructs measured, validation samples, and appropriate use.

Explain how civil commitment statutes for sexually violent persons work (definition of mental abnormality, likelihood standard, periodic review) and what an evaluator must address that differs from a criminal sentencing opinion.

Summarize the ethical and legal constraints on phallometric and plethysmographic assessment, including consent, evidentiary reliability challenges, and why many evaluators no longer rely on it.

Identify the research findings on treatment effect and recidivism that should inform a commitment opinion, and state what you cannot conclude from group data about one individual.

Draft the structure of an SVP evaluation report and flag the sections most vulnerable to cross-examination.

Explain the best-interests-of-the-child standard and how it differs from the parental fitness and psychological-parent doctrines, and identify what courts actually ask evaluators to answer.

Build a custody evaluation protocol covering informed consent to both parents, multi-source data, collateral contacts, child interview cautions, and the limits of testing in parenting capacity questions.

Critique the use of MMPI-2-RF, PAI, and parenting-specific measures in custody work, including why a personality profile alone cannot support a custody recommendation.

Distinguish malingering and symptom validity assessment in personal injury and disability cases, and name the instruments and strategies you would use to test effort.

Explain how causation, damages, and functional capacity questions shape a personal injury or disability opinion, and where the evaluator's role ends and the legal decision begins.

Summarize the core findings on police selection, fitness-for-duty evaluation, and the limits of pre-employment psychological testing under employment law constraints.

Explain the ethical tensions specific to correctional practice (informed consent to inmates, limits of confidentiality, dual loyalty to the institution, and the scope of the psychologist's duty to the person evaluated).

Describe the main models of correctional treatment and reentry (risk-need-responsivity, good-lives, therapeutic jurisprudence) and how program evaluation findings should shape recommendations.

Run a full timed practice exam under test conditions, then categorize every miss by domain and error type (knowledge gap versus misread versus overthinking).

Build a final-week review sheet limited to facts you got wrong twice, and schedule spaced re-review of those items across the remaining days.