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’.
