For our example lets use the PAI and the MMPI-2. Administration time for both of these would be about 4 hours. Scoring would be another hour or two. I, who am still a student, would bet that this interview would provide a more useful report. If I spent a total of five to six hours on an interview who knows what kind of information I could come up with.
Forensic psychology has to be the field of psychology most rigidly focused on standardized testing.
It is understandable. If you go into court and you know people are going to question your conclusions it is handy to be able to say you used such and such test which is widely accepted for violence risk assessments. However, anyone who really knows risk assessments knows that in the past these instruments have been of questionable validity. I think a better judgement could be made based on a clinical assessment interview alone. If you really know a person and how their mind works it would clearly be simpler to then predict their behavior.