The final plans for the SQE are due to be placed before the Legal Services Board for approval next month. The new system would then be phased in from 2021, eventually replacing the current qualification system of Legal Practice Course and traineeship (in future, solicitors will need a degree, two years qualifying experience and to have passed the SQE).
In a detailed 17-page letter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) this week, however, Charlotte Parkinson, chair of the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD), sets out a series of concerns about its impact on education, social mobility, equality and diversity, and standards for entry to the profession.
Parkinson wrote: ‘The removal of the requirement to complete a qualifying law degree or a graduate diploma in law coupled with the SQE 1’s reliance on multiple choice questions to assess a candidate’s functioning legal knowledge, dilutes the internationally recognised and respected standards for qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales and gives rise to serious doubts that multiple choice questions alone can authorise a candidate’s ability in all areas of law that the SRA grants a solicitor a licence to practice within’.
She highlighted that the pilot of SQE 2 has only recently been completed, and that only one equality, diversity and inclusion risk assessment has been completed and the JLD has ‘concerns about the scope of that risk assessment’.
Parkinson pointed out that many City firms are considering providing bespoke training for new recruits ‘to fill the gap which is perceived to be created by the lack of rigour involved in the SQE’. This approach sends ‘a negative message about the reliability and suitability of SQE to the wider world’, which risked ‘damaging the reputation’ of solicitors, ‘creates a significant risk of a two-tier profession and does nothing to improve accessibility and social mobility within the profession’.
Consequently, firms and candidates might opt for top-up courses and further learning. But these would only be available to those that can afford it, and would not help fulfil the SRA’s aim of ‘creating a more accessible, diverse profession with consistent standards’.
The JLD letter echoes many of the concerns of law firms and legal education providers about the use of multiple choice questions. For example, as Parkinson cites in her letter, Clyde & Co had ‘strong concerns’, the Association of Law Teachers had ‘grave concerns’, and Linklaters has expressed the view that ‘we fundamentally disagree that the proposed SQE is a robust and effective measure of competence’.
