2007-or9-Forensic assessments in Slovenia: The prevalent usage of questionable psychological tools Forensic experts evaluate psychological and legal constructs to provide a reliable scientific information to a judge or jury. Unfortunately, forensic psychologists do not have clear standards to follow and as such, they do not have clear guidance to achieve an acceptable level of scientific verifiability necessary in forensic assessments. Only guidelines considering best practices are available which are too general and non-binding. Therefore, it is hard to know how exactly forensic evaluators gain and interpret information, which is then used to answer legal questions. Practice surveys may identify professional trends among experts and give insight into standards applied and reveal potential problems as well. Thus, the practice of Slovenian psychological expert witnesses was examined by the review of written expert opinions which were created from 2003 to 2018. Courts were requested to allow review of all court cases were a psychological expert opinion was involved in court decisions. Some cases are still undergoing court procedures; therefore, according to permissions granted and cases included in the research 60% of all criminal and civil cases were analysed. The review of expert opinions was focused on the use of specific psychological tools (tests) which were noted as applied in written expert opinions. In 150 criminal and civil expert witness opinions, various psychological tools were used 318 times. Thus, a typical personal assessment consisted of an interview, two psychological tests and if children were involved psychologists additionally and typically included observation of a parent-child interaction. The most used tools were projective tests, which were used in 101 (67%) of all forensic evaluations. The Rorschach Inkblot test was used in 73 (23%) of cases, Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test (Bender-Gestalt test) in 32 (10%) cases, various children's drawings techniques (e.g. family, house, person, tree) were used in 63 (20%) cases, the Sacks Sentence Completion Test (SSCT) and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) were each used in 7 (2%) of all cases. In the cases of alleged sexual abuse of children, Anatomical dolls were used at least two times (in five such cases psychologists did not report what projective technique was used, they had only noted, “a projective test”). Objective multiscale inventories were used in 132 (41%) personal assessments. The most frequently applied objective tests were Wechsler–Bellevue Intelligence Scales (WB-II, WAIS-IV, and WISC-III) which were used in 27 (8%) cases, Plutchik's Emotion Profile Index (EPI) was used in 21 (7%) cases, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-II) in 10 (3%), and MMPI-2 in 6 (2%) of analysed cases. Additionally, in 36 (24%) of expert opinions only an interview and observation with no psychological tests were applied. Generally, most psychological tests that are frequently used are not standardized, and no adequate norms are provided for interpretation of test results. Findings presented are not consistent with contemporary findings elsewhere. Moreover, they are mostly opposing. Typically, the most used tests in forensic evaluations are objective tests; however, in Slovenia projective tests are used in most evaluations. It seems that in Slovenia forensic evaluations still and at least partly rely on the use of controversial projective techniques and non-standardized instruments without normative references. This raises concerns about validity of forensic information provided to courts. Additionally, no expert opinion was found where a psychologist would cite a reference, explain scientific findings or general scientific opinion about the matter discussed, and no detailed description of an expert opinion construction was found. Typically, expert opinions are based on “ipse dixit” or “it is just how it is"; thus, they are based on assertions without scientific grounding or assumptions without verification. Expert witness conclusions which rely on psychological tools with low validity or reliability, lead to speculations or educated guessing about characteristics of persons assessed. Therefore, by unreliable and speculative expert opinions, courts may be misled into unjust and harmful decisions. The possible reasons for such a worrying situation in Slovenia may be the absence of a proper education of psychologists who are not aware of the difference in standards of practice between clinical and forensic psychology. Perhaps more importantly, it appears that most Slovenian forensic experts may not be aware that forensic testing requires reliance on scientifically based, standardized and empirically tested methods. This review of the practice may be the first step into necessary changes aimed to provide more reliable and ethically congruent information to courts.