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Ex Hogan Lovells solicitor James Richardson and former Linklaters solicitor Helen Pamely<\/p>\nEx-Hogan Lovells and Linklaters lawyers slam the SQE<\/p>\n
Ex Hogan Lovells solicitor James Richardson and former Linklaters solicitor Helen Pamely<\/p>\n
Two former City lawyers have teamed up to demand an overhaul of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE).<\/p>\n
James Richardson and Helen Pamely, who trained and worked at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader<\/a> and Linklaters<\/a> respectively, argue that the SQE is too hard, too expensive and doesn\u2019t reflect legal practice. Speaking on the Lawyer Unleashed Podcast<\/a>, they also say it has failed in one of its stated aims of increasing diversity in the profession.<\/p>\n Particularly damning, given the duo\u2019s backgrounds at big law firms, is the suggestion made by Richardson that the SQE has made qualifying \u201cmuch harder in this really weird way that doesn\u2019t actually reflect what it\u2019s like to become a lawyer\u201d. <\/p>\n The ex-Hogan M&A specialist, who now works in-house for an insurtech company, elaborates:<\/p>\n \u201cSo if you look at the SQE1 exam, now that\u2019s a load of multiple choice questions. You\u2019ve got five possible answers, one of which is the single best answer, and the others are kind of plausible but a bit distracting and not quite right. And that just does not reflect what a lawyer does.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds: \u201cThey mix up all these questions. So you\u2019ll go in and you\u2019ll have a question, and you\u2019ll have 90 seconds to answer a question on criminal practice, and then you\u2019ll have one on trust law, and then you\u2019ll have one on civil litigation, and it just goes on and on like that, and it\u2019s, um, it\u2019s incredibly hard to do. So no wonder loads of people are, are failing.\u201d<\/p>\n Responding, Pamely says: <\/p>\n \u201cMy head actually genuinely hurts hearing you say that. This idea that you\u2019ve got these multiple choice questions. As you say, no one\u2019s ever gonna walk into your office and say, \u2018Here are five potential answers. Which one is it?\u2019 All of which are probably very similar but slightly different. And also to the second point you just said there, never would you have to answer a question on criminal and then wills and trusts. This whole thing just, who made this? Why have they done it this way?\u201d<\/p>\n While the podcast focuses largely on the negatives of the SQE, Richardson does acknowledge that it has provided students with greater flexibility. He gives the example of a talented paralegal in his team using it to qualify as a solicitor while working part-time.<\/p>\n What neither Richardson or Pamely does ponder on, though, is the wider goal of the SQE to centrally assess the exam to becoming a solicitor, marking a break from the old Legal Practice Course (LPC) regime which saw individual law schools award grades in a way that sometimes lacked consistency. Whatever you think about the SQE \u2014 and there have been some truly awful teething problems, not least from the assessor Kaplan<\/a> \u2014 most agree this step was sensible, bringing England & Wales in line with the US and other major common law jurisdictions.<\/p>\n Removing assessment power from law schools is also expected to create more competition in the exam prep market, and as a result lower prices. We are already seeing this in the explosion of SQE companion apps and websites. Indeed, Richardson himself is behind one of these, recently launching a company called Law Student Academy, that promises to help students \u201cconfidently pass the SQE first time\u201d if they pay \u201ca single, affordable subscription\u201d. <\/p>\n Watch Richardson and Pamely\u2019s discussion in full<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-Hogan Lovells and Linklaters lawyers slam the SQE Ex Hogan Lovells solicitor James Richardson and former Linklaters solicitor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,82217,231652,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-697263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-law-firms","tag-sqe","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}