Drafting and research skills appear to lag under new regime, according to exclusive Legal Cheek research
New research by Legal Cheek has found that trainees who have completed the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) appear to be falling short in core legal skills — such as drafting and legal research — in the eyes of law firms.
The results represent the views of 40 graduate recruitment and learning & development professionals at leading City and national law firms as well as the London offices of US firms. The SQE will be a key topic of discussion at today’s LegalEdCon 2025, Legal Cheek ‘s annual legal education and training conference, which wis attended by over 100 law firms as well as leading education providers and professional bodies.
One of the key differences between the SQE and Legal Practice Course (LPC) examinations is that the SQE purports to assess candidates at the level of a newly qualified (‘Day One’) solicitor, whereas the LPC was designed to prepare students for their first day as a trainee.
Despite this, only 7.5% of respondents feel SQE trainees have more legal knowledge than their LPC counterparts.
“We have found that the SQE trainees are not considered Day One solicitor ready from our firm’s point of view, despite the SQE 2 supposedly measuring this”, one graduate recruiter told us. “There is clearly a large gap between what the SRA deems as a Day One solicitor and what our firm does.”
Additionally, despite the closed-book method of SQE assessment, only 12.5% of those surveyed reported an improved ability to recall legal knowledge in their SQE trainees.
The research shows that there is a perception that SQE students are left under-prepared in core skill areas such as drafting and legal research. When asked whether SQE trainees’ legal writing and drafting skills are more advanced than LPC trainees’ at the same stage, not one respondent felt that they were. Forty-five percent disagreed with the statement, with 12.5% disagreeing strongly. When asked about legal research, only 5% said that SQE trainees were better equipped than their LPC counterparts.
This particular blindspot was the subject of several comments.
“Our SQE trainees generally do not have the same written abilities as our LPC trainees and we notice a marked difference in drafting ability,” wrote one respondent. Another reported that, “LPC students were far better at legal research and analysing problems. We are seeing more of a shift of learning to pass an exam rather than learning to become a lawyer.” Overall, it seemed SQE grads “have a much more academic focus than practical”.
When discussing the advantages the SQE gives trainees, “resilience” was the key word, mentioned in several responses. One L&D professional characterised SQE trainees as hard grafters who “seem to cope better with the transition to the training contract, in terms of workload and effort needed”.
However, the toughness of these exams has also raised concerns. “The strain of taking the SQE has been evident,” one respondent claimed, while another was troubled by “the pressures that come with the format of the exams and the impact that can have on our future trainees’ mental wellbeing”. One comment linked this mental strain to the SQE pass rates, which have been much lower than those on the LPC, “failing exams has had a considerable impact on mental health”.
It’s not just candidates who are affected by the higher number of failures on these exams. Graduate recruitment professionals also complained of the problems they face when future trainees fail to pass their exams. Some of these issues are exacerbated by the timings of SQE results, one respondent pointed out:
“SQE2 results being released so close to the traditional September training contract start date is particularly problematic, because there isn’t enough time to back-fill empty slots.”
“It is a frustrating challenge as we plan two years in advance for our trainee head-counts and are now suddenly having to be flexible at the last minute to postpone or pull forward start dates depending on whether people miss or fail an exam,” another told us.
Plus, these exam sittings don’t come cheap — as pointed out by one survey taker: “It’s also a huge cost to the firm.”
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