The majority of law firms think the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) will not be enough to prepare students for legal practice. Forty-three graduate recruitment and learning and development (L&D) professionals at City law firms took part in Legal Cheek‘s exclusive SQE survey in association with The University of Law.
The main concern among law firms appears to be that the new centralised route to qualification won’t cover enough ground. They believe students will require a more thorough course in order to fully prepare them for their training contracts or qualifying work experience (QWE). Almost three-quarters surveyed (70%) responded this way.
Some 19% of respondents said they think passing SQE1 and SQE2 will be sufficient as long as students do so before they start their training. In comparison, 12% thought passing SQE1 will be sufficient for students to start their training and SQE2 can then prepare them for on-the-job learning during this period.
So, if, as the majority say, the SQE won’t be enough, what will be?
The SQE is a two-part national assessment to be set and examined centrally. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has been open about the fact that the so-called ‘super-exam’ is a foundation to build on, an L&D manager at a leading City law firm told Legal Cheek. As such, the SRA’s role is to determine the minimum for someone to be suitable for qualification as a solicitor – whatever their ultimate job may be. This means that there will have to be tailoring for the specifics of the role they are taking on. For City practices that means putting in additional content to prepare trainees for work in a City law firm.
This gives firms greater flexibility. “Rather than dealing with lots of prescriptive requirements from the regulator, firms will now have more freedom to provide bespoke training that meets the needs of their business,” Julie Brannan, Director of legal Education and Training at the SRA, told us.
Lloyd Stephenson, Head of Resourcing at City firm Ashurst, agreed. He noted that although the SQE “does require less corporate and commercial law to be studied”, it allows “more flexibility to shape and adapt the training for our emerging talent”.
It seems that elite City law firms will provide SQE ‘top-up courses’ for trainees to supplement the knowledge and skills examined under the new regime. These are likely to be in addition to those taken by trainees to prepare for the SRA’s centralised assessments. Exactly what they’ll cover depends on the type of firm a trainee joins, as Brannan said, but “some might want to focus more on a particular area of practice, tech or broader business skills”, she added.
Robert Halton, Chief People Officer at Burges Salmon, shared with us some of the areas he thinks commercial law firms should aim to include on their bespoke courses. “Understanding the business needs of clients, managing legal projects and the role and application of technology are critical skills for the professional careers of our lawyers which go beyond the core areas that the SRA identified,” he said.
Exactly where these top-up courses will sit in the SQE timeline is unclear. Yet, we now know the dates of the first SQE exams and given that a student must pass SQE1 before they proceed to SQE2, and that there’s going to be a six to ten week wait for SQE1 results to be released, this could be prime time for firms to deliver extra courses and get rookies up to speed.
They’re likely to partner with and commission legal education providers to deliver these courses. Some of the individuals we spoke to encouraged students and prospective trainees to research any future employer’s plans in this regard.
But what about those students that don’t secure an elite City TC? How will they go about getting similar levels of exposure? It’s likely we’ll see a new market emerge where the leading law schools offer top-up courses, in addition to preparatory courses to pass the two exams, and at an additional cost. What this means for access to the profession remains to be seen.
These findings were originally published on Legal Cheek.
THE SQE EXPLAINED
Lawyer or law student, the SQE isn’t easy to get your head around. Here it is in a nutshell.
At the most fundamental level, the SQE refers to the two-part exams set to replace the current practice courses needed to train as a solicitor in England and Wales, becoming the new centralised route from 1 September 2021. As a result, what is currently understood as the period of recognised training (or the ‘training contract’), will fall under an umbrella of ‘qualifying work experience’ from this date. There will also be much greater flexibility in terms of what will suffice as ‘qualifying work experience’, with aspiring solicitors expected to have greater autonomy over their training routes.
The first stage of the assessment, known as SQE 1, will examine functioning legal knowledge, i.e. black letter law, through two exams of 180 multiple choice questions each. The second stage, SQE 2, will test practical legal skills such as drafting and advocacy through 15 to 18 tasks, or ‘stations’.
A transition period also runs in tandem to the new route all the way up to 2032. This means that anyone who has started on an LPC, GDL or LLB course prior to 1 September 2021 will have the option of electing between qualifying via the traditional route or opting to go down the new centralised route.
The principal drivers behind the new SQE route indicated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority include the desire for standardisation, flexibility, and to displace the bottleneck that currently exists at graduate level. However, there are concerns that these new condensed courses will not live up to their predecessors, namely the LPC and GDL, when it comes to adequately preparing students for practise in a law firm. With providers preparing students for the first round of exams in November 2021, this is a discussion that needs to be had, and fast.
To find out more about ULaw's SQE route, visit our dedicated page here.
