While university degree awards are generally in the bag once the course fees are received, the award of professional qualifications is based on a different class of stakeholder: the clients who will receive professional advice.

Now, in the information age, the mediocrity have a worldwide megaphone to air their entitlement, and only the fortitude of the SRA will maintain its crucial role as a gatekeeper to the profession. Snowflakes whose degree tutors feared cancellation for not awarding the required grades have nothing like the same sway over the SRA, and long may this continue.

Personally, I suspect the high recent pass rate of 60% indicates that second-rate whiners are still being admitted to the Roll, but for pity’s sake, please make sure the remaining 40% stay behind the gate. Who agrees with me?

Might what?

Try to bring clarity. One cannot be expected to reread a badly-nested comments scheme to figure out what you refer to.

Thank you so much for the kind words. Would I recommend taking the SQE in my circumstances? Absolutely not but I knew I wanted to do this and this was my “shot” (the corresponding song from Hamilton about not throwing away my shot was in my head ALOT!)

I’m not posting for any particular plaudits about having overcome things to achieve this but merely to demonstrate how possible it is. If I can do it with all of those additional responsibilities then really I don’t see that it should be unachievable for someone fresh out of uni with no responsibilities. If I was doing it under those circumstances, I can’t imagine the score I’d have come out with (only a couple of marks off top quintile on second attempt at SQE 2 as it was).

I know more than most the levels you have to dig to. I lived on 4 hours sleep or less for months. My daughter was still breastfeeding when I did SQE1 and up for multiple feeds per night (I studied in the middle of the night with her!) It’s no cake walk!

I do think coming from a working class background actually helped. I’ve seen my parents work their arses off to get in to the jobs they did which would be degree level positions – because they wanted it. It laid the template for what you have to do to get where you want to go (and at the risk of sounding like the Oscars – they were awesome, no pressure from them just support and absolute pride that I’ve done it).

Are you really saying you don’t believe you are as good a practising solicitor as the SQE found you to be?

I think the word “real” is the focal point of your comment here.

The practice tests illustrate the nature, structure and format of the exam. So what if students find the real exam more challenging than the practice questions (which they probably couldn’t answer anyway but hey, selective memory)? That’s life. That’s law. Just as in real-life legal practice, the difficulty of the problems that come your way is not always predictable.

Wheat.

Chaff.

Factual evidence – the aforementioned BPP student
Aug 5 2025 4:32pm

“The solicitor doesn’t have to remember the law from five different practice areas. They remember one, from practicing it for three years, as that’s the number of years before you can practice unsupervised. We sit this pre TC, or five years before that, on five practice areas, that we learned in the span of a couple of months. Don’t be ridiculous.”

I cannot reply directly to this comment owing to the restriction on nested replies within this comments system, but I do take exception to the widespread ignorance surrounding the correct grammatical use of “practice” and “practise”. Readers may call me old-school, but I can assure you that lawyers who passed their exams without wailings and special pleadings will notice such mistakes; and, rightly or otherwise, this will affect a lawyer’s credibility. Such is the practice of law.

It wasn’t intended as such but I agree that is how it comes across. The naivety of the OP’s comment was both breathtaking and touching, and I confess I struggled to articulate that in my response.

Tell that to all the students who passed the practice test off-book over and over, but not the real one

The solicitor doesn’t have to remember the law from five different practice areas. They remember one, from practicing it for three years, as that’s the number of years before you can practice unsupervised. We sit this pre TC, or five years before that, on five practice areas, that we learned in the span of a couple of months. Don’t be ridiculous.

Nobody is forcing mediocre students to make any financial commitment to the SQE, Anon. Mediocre students can deselect themselves before paying a penny, perhaps by practising the large numbers of sample questions first. Wishful thinking has never guaranteed success, and this applies as much to the SQE as anything else in life. Can we agree on this?

Good. Law is not easy. It should be accessible to everyone to pass, but if you aren’t able to pass the standard exam that means you can be a solicitor, then you can’t be a solicitor.

Fully expecting to be down voted, but the standard is high for a reason. You have three opportunities to make the grade.

Yes, I passed SQE1 and SQE2 first time. It is brutal. It is also rewarding.

To petition against something that so many people have strived to pass is doing a disservice to those who have managed it.

Would you want your solicitor to have to look up the answer to not one, or two, but the majority of queries that arise in discussion? Would you not want the sense that your lawyer was drawing upon a reservoir of knowledge, rather than winging it?

This seems about right, being a solicitor shouldn’t be for everyone, there should be some filtering out, and this exam tracks perfectly with previous academic performance, whilst genuinely forcing you to brush up on core and practical legal knowledge.

There are some things that I hate. I can imagine that for non-sponsored students, it’s a major expense, and I don’t really see how it can cost that much. The lack of accurate past papers is incredibly annoying, as is the constantly changing nature of the pass mark required.

Finally, it is incredibly stressful, but in my case, this was mostly because I knew I’d be fired if I failed. TBF to them, that is not the SRA’s fault, that is a decision of individual law firms, after all, the SRA lets you resit twice.

You have enough life experience to understand, unlike many of the more mediocre students on this page, that success requires hard work, and that life’s added challenges are often unfair but can nonetheless be tackled by those who have grit and determination.

Well done, and I wish you every success – you have decades ahead of you to forge your career.

You’re correct about Krug, that much I’ll concede.

‘Practised’, please.

It seems you are part of the problem.

But what are YOU arguing here? That an exam determining whether somebody is fit to practise law is flawed if those who succeeded found it difficult?

Totally agree. Exams are not meant to be easy and being a lawyer isn’t easy!
The SQE is just another exam that you need to pass to achieve your goal, if you can’t do it then the career is not for you.
Working full time and studying for the SQE is hard but not impossible, you just need to prioritise your time.

For myself I never thought I’d have the opportunity to do a training contract until my work offered me the chance. I studied and passed the SQE 1 when my daughter was 1 and my son 5, and they were 3 and 6 when I passed SQE2. My partner has disabilities and I do have some caring responsibilities to him, all the whilst I was working full time. I am 37 and so it was a very long time since I was out of uni and had to learn everything fresh.

I do think sometimes people from a more prosperous background think everything will be handed to them and therefore struggle to understand when things are hard!

If you were clever enough to actually read the petition, you would note that she’s actually not a future trainee – she is currently undergoing a TC. Ergo, she did not fail. Given your inability to do research before commenting as if you know something, it seems likely you might!