Why I won’t stop going on about the SQE

So there we have it – the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) has been pushed back to 2021. No surprises there really, we could have told the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) ages ago that there is no way they’d be ready by 2020

Anyway, people keep telling me that this is happening, that I just have to accept it and that we just have to get on with it. Well, no, no and no. While it does seem like the SQE is indeed coming, final approval for the assessment is still required from the Legal Services Board. I desperately want them to grow a backbone and declare that a qualifying examination which is likely to harm widening participation, disadvantage already disadvantaged potential solicitors further and write any ‘poor people’s law’ out of education and training for solicitors completely is just not good enough. Come on, we’re better than this utter nonsense. We can do better. We don’t need to kills aspiration and crush a generation who could make a real difference in the world.

Anyway, even if the SQE is coming, I do not have to, nor will I, just accept that. I will keep shouting about it. I will keep telling anyone who will listen (or who won’t, don’t care) why I think it’s a disaster. It promotes a skewed and, I would suggest, harmful conceptualisation of law. Luke Mason has written about this in his contribution to the forthcoming Special Issue of the Law Teacher: The International Journal of Legal Education. In the same issue Doug Morrison highlights the risk the SQE poses to creativity within the law curriculum and Elaine Hall teaches us a thing or two about robust assessment – which the SQE is not. Kathryn Dutton and I wrote about widening participation. These articles alone give you plenty of reasons to scrap the SQE as proposed and go back to the drawing board or at the very least for Law Schools to ignore it.

Let me be clear. I find this hard because I find it hard to justify why I am even remotely interested in the SQE. I don’t care about the professions, I don’t teach/train/whatever future lawyers much less solicitors. I, on a good day anyway, help people learn about law, help them to think, help them to articulate those thoughts and to write and argue and evaluate and use information to form a view and build and argument. Then I want them to go away and make the world a better place and some will do that as lawyers but most will not. So I care, not because of the impact the SQE has on the profession (although I care at the level we should all care about the lack of legal aid lawyers, solicitors who know about family law or employment law or social welfare…) but because of the impact law schools are allowing the SQE to have on the undergraduate law provision.

As a sector we have fallen for the SRA’s ploy. They want us to do their work for them. They want us to train solicitors. University Law Schools are to train their students to pass the SQE. The SRA frees us from the shackles (not that they were particularly tight!) of the Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) for their purposes (but the Bar keeps it) and says they are leaving us alone to get on with things as we think fit but at the same time clearly expect education providers to pick up the SQE preparation. Why are we doing this? Some institutions clearly see opportunities here and others feel they have no choice because they need to continue to recruit high numbers of students. Seriously? You understand that we are lying to our students by selling them SQE ready programmes, yes? If the SRA insists on the SQE, we should leave them to it. As legal educators we should stick two fingers up at them and reclaim our discipline and our expertise. We work in Higher Education. Education people. Education!

The best thing we can do for our students in Post 1992s or lower ranked Schools generally is to provide them with a strong UG education which focuses on helping them to think, articulate, write and have confidence in themselves. If others then want to think about tagging on an SQE prep course, be my guest (but don’t expect me to contribute or be nice about it). I’m not suggesting we try and be like Russel Groups institutions – we’re different, we can, should and must offer different things to our students because generally our students are different and what we do can help bridge the gap life has created for some of those coming to us. What is that difference? Well that’s for each institution to articulate but it has to be based on an understanding of who our students are and how we can help them get to where they want to be.

Anyway, I started writing this thinking about the other part of today’s headline – the cost of the SQE is likely to be between £3000 and £4500. That’s just the exam. JUST THE EXAM. For what it’s worth I think the eventual cost will be at the top end of that or higher but even if those figures are correct, add a prep course and you’re squarely within LPC fee territory. So the only way the SRA’s insistence that the SQE route would be cheaper than current routes holds true is if university law schools prepare candidates for the SQE as part of degree programmes. But the SRA aren’t expecting that. Not at all. Not one bit.

So why won’t I stop going on? Because this shit matters. It matters to my students, it matters to the legal profession, it matters to society and it says something about who we are and what we value. I hope I am wrong about the SQE, I hope that those more optimistic than me are right but I’m not prepared to sit back and let the SRA get on with it on the basis that maybe I am being a bit dramatic about all this. Are you?