The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) is set to change the face of the legal profession, ensuring that the exam standards are high and the pass rates are consistent among all would-be solicitors, regardless of your background or the university you attended. Levelling out the playing field, the SQE makes the path to a law career much clearer for many. Offering greater flexibility, it kicks open the doors to include people from a wider and more diverse talent pool to enter the legal profession.
Yet you may wonder what the examinations will be like. How difficult are they? How can I be prepared?
The path to legal qualification
Studying to become a lawyer has always been a lengthy pursuit, requiring years of toil, study and a commitment to both academic rigour and ongoing professional development. Law is a vocation– and attaining the right to practice it demands dedication and focus.
Traditionally, the path was clearly defined: achieve at least three A levels with high grades, secure an undergraduate degree, pass the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and finally secure a training contract and finish the Professional Skills Course (PSC). It required substantial financial investment and the ability to secure a training contract with a firm – something only the lucky few were able to attain.
The SQE is reshaping how legal professionals qualify and how non-law graduates can further their career progression in England and Wales. The base criteria for the SQE is a degree in any subject, or equivalent level qualification (such as an apprenticeship), combined with two years of qualifying work experience (QWE), which can be taken before, during or after the exams.
Without question, the SQE is a big change for the legal profession – perhaps the biggest that has been witnessed in decades. Yet it need not be daunting. Like anything else, success in the SQE will come down to one simple word: preparation. Understanding what’s involved with the SQE is the crucial first step towards embarking on the road to success – and beginning your exciting new career pathway practising law.
SQE: A new way of testing solicitors’ skills
Not only is it a more equitable route to practice, but the exam is shaking up the way aspiring solicitors are tested. The SQE’s introduction sees past courses such as the LPC and PSC being phased out and replaced by what some are now calling the ‘super exam’. Candidates will be expected to demonstrate the necessary competency requirements to practice law. These include ethics, professionalism and judgment, working with others, technical legal practice, and managing yourself and your workload.
The new SQE assessment is formed of two parts: the SQE1 and SQE2, both of which must be passed, alongside completing the qualifying work experience, for a candidate to be deemed suitable and competent to become a solicitor in England and Wales.
The SQE1 exam: Your functional legal knowledge (MCQs)
SQE1 is a computer-based exam. It is designed to test functioning legal knowledge by way of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). This is far more challenging than it may sound. These MCQs don’t have one right answer and a few wrong ones. All the answers are plausible – but you need to choose one that is most suitable for the context given in the question. You could also call it a single-best-answer question. Excelling in this form of multiple-choice exams is a very specific skill that requires both practice and expertise.
The SQE1 assessment consists of 180 multiple-choice questions, which require candidates to demonstrate their knowledge of the law, its rules and principles, and show the competence required to become a newly qualified solicitor.
It covers a wide range of legal areas, including business law and practice; contract; tort; constitutional and administrative law; property practice; land law; trusts; solicitors’ accounts and much more.
The SQE2 exam: Your application of legal skills
The SQE2 assessment is a two-part examination process, comprising oral and written assessments. Oral skills will be tested through both client interviews and advocacy, while written skills will be judged through case and matter analysis, legal research, legal writing and legal drafting.
The oral element of SQE2 includes four oral legal skills assessments, taking place over two half days. The written aspect covers 12 legal skills assessments, taking place over three half days. The interviewing exercises are marked by an assessor – playing the role of the client – and these are marked based on skills only. All other aspects of the assessment are marked by a qualified solicitor. The candidate’s skills and application of the law are assessed here. Candidates must demonstrate their professional ethics and ability to act honestly and with integrity throughout the SQE1 and SQE2 examination process.
So why is the average pass rate so low?
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) publishes the pass rates after every exam. Some people have expressed concern about the pass rate for SQE1 – currently 53% for the SQE1 July 2023 assessments.
But it’s worth remembering that the LPC wasn’t intended to prepare you to start working as a newly qualified (NQ) solicitor – it was only opening the door to you getting another two years of training experience before you could qualify. The SQE1 and SQE2 exams, however, test whether you’re ready to start day one as an NQ. In our experience, the pass rate for those candidates who have done some or all of their QWE is higher. Still, we have hundreds of graduates who pass the exams for the first time!
Another factor is the sheer volume of learning material to memorise, while candidates who didn’t do extensive practice in the single-best-answer MCQs may also find it harder. The US Bar exams follow the same form of MCQs, and at BARBRI we’ve been preparing US Bar candidates for their exams for 50+ years. We’ve been using the exact same methodology and tech to prepare SQE candidates from the very first sitting in 2021. We offer more than 3,000 test MCQs in a detailed personal study plan using spaced repetition, a tried-and-tested way of embedding learning, and we see very high pass rates – 66% for the July 2023 exam.
Does SQE make it easier to qualify as a lawyer?
The SQE provides a clear pathway to qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales. While candidates must still hold an undergraduate degree or equivalent experience, a law degree will no longer be a formal requirement. Although the strong grounding in legal knowledge that a law degree provides will remain advantageous.
The new centralised route to qualification will serve as the foundational entry point for a career in law underpinned by valuable qualifying work experience, success in SQE1 and SQE2 will demonstrate that candidates have the necessaryacumen and aptitude to become practising solicitors.
The breadth of topics covered across what some in the industry are calling a ‘super exam’ means that all successful candidates will have proven their competence and understanding of a broad range of legal areas. The SQE’s flexibility affords both law and non-law students the same equal opportunity to work hard and enter the profession, with dedicated training providers such as BARBRI aiming to help make a career in law more accessible than ever before.
Preparing to succeed
The SQE is a significant shift for the UK’s legal industry. That’s without question. Yet for would-be solicitors in England and Wales, there is no need for this new approach to qualification to be daunting. There is ample time to fully prepare and be ready for what lies ahead.
Specialist SQE Prep courses can be undertaken to suit individual circumstances, either as a full-time 10-week course for recent law graduates or as part-time study spread over 20 or 40 weeks for ultimate flexibility.
The blended learning experience draws on BARBRI’s 50 years’ expertise as a specialist legal training provider. It combines online studying with full 1:1 support from your Learning Coach, alongside the opportunity to attend face-to-face touchpoint workshops, preparing you not only for a new style of legal assessment but also equipping you with the skills necessary to succeed and kickstart your exciting new law career.
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