Are you allowed to use a calculator when solving the questions on taxes?

Personally, I wouldn’t go for ULaw. I’m with them and I find them really bad. The questions may be similar in content but are written in a completely different style to the exam.

The whole course is designed really badly, there’s minimal support and the tutors don’t really know what they’re teaching. I’ve heard good things about Barbri so if I was studying for it again I would probably go with them.

Use the University of Law if you can. Their textbooks are excellent and the practice MCQs mirror the SQE1 questions almost exactly – some are even identical to the ones in the assessment.

Yes, but the question is will those doing QWE actually get NQ positions? Or is it just providing people with false hope?

I’m afraid I disagree with you here, the SQE has opened up the legal profession to those already working in law (paralegals, secretaries etc). I’m a qualified legal advisor working full time and it would have taken me 6 years to do the GDL and LPC part time and a training contract. The SQE should allow me to qualify in 2 years.

I’m afraid I disagree with you here, the SQE has opened up the legal profession to those already working in law (paralegals, secretaries etc). I’m a qualified legal advisor working full time and it would have taken me 6 years to do the GDL and LPC part time and a training contract. The SQE should allow me to qualify in 2 years.

Hi could share with us your provider in preparation for the course

Solidarity as a fellow career changer. It took me much more work than expected to get a training contract, and ironically if my CV was 10yrs less experienced, I would have breezed through it. The whole process, including SJTs, were geared only towards students. It was very odd to have to recall GCSEs and A-Levels again.

Hi,

Can you share which providers you can recommend?
Thanks

I doubt very much that the SRA/Kaplan will trouble themselves to read this article and the comments.

But, they do regularly meet with the providers and employers in morning seminar type discussions to hear the concerns of students, sponsoring employers etc many of which echo those above. One organisation shouting about this is the City of London Law Society Training Committee. They’re a powerful group as an arm of the Law Society, the body which represents lawyers.

The issue seems to be that there are some points the SRA via Kaplan are simply not prepared to change and some they say they’re working on but don’t seem to be making particularly fast progress. For example, in order to respond to complaints about the shortage/difficulty of booking places, they’re scrambling around trying to add more test centres. They seem to want to avoid using academic institutions e.g. Ulaw/BPP facilites in order not to have conflicts of interest/appear neutral even though those organisations are well set up for this sort of exam. So we get stuck with driving centres and the like, which then cascades to other issues around tech, air con, etc etc. The more test centres and places required = higher cost.

The issue around past papers seems to be simply that they don’t have enough of question bank yet to be able to release them as they’re reliant on re-use. An extremely useful bit of lobbying would be to get them to expand the range of test questions.

I’m not sure overall whether, other than the sort of feedback session I mentioned above, you’ll ever get the SRA/Kaplan and providers to work together. The latter would like to. The former seem to be keen to appear neutral and given they continue to maintain that prep courses are not necessary, the information flow will be limited. The prep course providers are looking at the syllabus, using the same practice questions (and trying to replicate by writing their own) but they don’t have any sort of inside info and one provider doesn’t have any better connection to the SRA/Kaplan than another.

The way to get the SRA and Kaplan to listen is to keep raising your feedback directly with them. On here has it’s own useful purpose but not that.

Agreed; and whilst the firms always say that they look at ‘equivalent’ to PQE, the reality is that they don’t. As an industry, its recruitment and business development approach is hopelessly ineffective.

This is a good idea. Do the SRA collect this data? i.e. when you book do, is there reportable tick box to ask whether you have prepared with a third party and a drop down list to choose from? If not, they won’t be able to answer the question and if not reportable i.e. free text, it will be very difficult to do.

Given the SRA insisted as part of the initial proposal that prep courses wouldn’t be necessary, I’d be surprised if they asked and chose to report on any differences here in case it proved them wrong! Call me cynical…

I know the providers of the courses try and report on their pass rates but they’re reliant on students updating them as to their results. Unlike the LPC they don’t get notified. So if you’re looking at providers, you can ask how their pass rates differ to the SRA’s national average but make sure you check what % of students shared the data with their provider otherwise you won’t know whether it’s accurate.

I whole heartedly agree with your assessment.
I sat the SQE1 in July 2023, through the ULAW LLM program and just put the hard work in.

That’s all it took to pass with 71% and 77% on the two FLK exams. There is no magic or superhuman effort required here.

The standard of SQE is aimed beyond the old LPC, which I could have taken instead but chose SQE as I pop out of academia at the point of a day 1 qualified solicitor.

Real life clients will expect their legal adviser to know the basic application of law. The breadth of knowledge is to be expected of anyone entering the profession of Solicitor.

My only criticism is the cost, which is ridiculously high. The level of cost seems disproportionate and really needs to be addressed through some form of enquiry.

Also worth highlighting is the terrible booking system – logged on at 10am when booking opened and didn’t get through until 4pm, essentially wasting a full work day. There was little to no communication from the SRA that day. When I did finally get through, there were no spaces in my 30 closest test centres. I ended up sitting both exams in London and staying there for 10 days. I live in Newcastle and there is a test centre in the city centre. I know someone else who was forced to travel to Vienna (!) to sit their exams. As advised, I checked the system daily to book to a closer location but there was nothing. So not only is travel to SQE2 oral test centres costly, but also SQE1 and SQE2 written test centres too. I work for a legal charity and am only able to sit the exams through a scholarship, for which I’m very thankful, because there’s no chance I could have afforded the exams and prep course otherwise.

What tosh! These exams are far easier than their predecessors- the SRA had decided that it wasn’t fair that candidates should have to undergo intellectual rigour.
What is the point in having qualified solicitors who are unable to withstand the demands of the profession?