What is the SQE?
Who is the SQE for?
Costs and fees
Case studies
Dates and locations
Assessment information
The assessment day
Results and resits
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The monitoring and maximising diversity survey has been updated. Please return to the survey to reconfirm your answers and complete the new section at the end.
You must do this to remain eligible for the SQE. You will not be able to book your next assessment until you have updated your answers.
The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) is a single, rigorous assessment for all aspiring solicitors. The SQE will mean that everyone who becomes a solicitor will meet the same high standards in a consistent way.
The results page of the candidate account will be unavailable from 7am to 5pm on 09 September. If you access the results page during this time you will be presented with a page displaying an error message - this will be in place whilst we prepare for an upcoming results release. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
July SQE1 results will be released on 10 September. Please see the SQE news for more information.
The SQE is provided by Kaplan SQE Ltd., working with, and on behalf of, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). All information provided has been written in conjunction with, and adhering to, the SRA’s guidelines.
We have worked with solicitors, employers, education training providers, careers advisers and aspiring solicitors to develop information to help you understand and prepare for the SQE.
The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) is a single, rigorous assessment that all aspiring solicitors will take before qualifying. To qualify you need to:
have a degree in any subject or a qualification or experience that is equivalent to a degree, such as a solicitor apprenticeship which combines on-the-job experience and training.
Complete two years' full-time (or equivalent) Qualifying Work Experience.
Pass both stages of the SQE assessment - SQE1 focuses on practical legal knowledge and SQE2 on practical legal skills.
Meet our character and suitability requirements.
Create your personal SQE account and book your assessments.
Find out what happens after passing the SQE and admission to the roll of solicitors.
We are pleased to announce that we are increasing the number of SQE1 testing dates within each assessment window, as well as providing additional information to candidates when they receive their results.
We will be moving to week-long assessment windows for each of FLK1 and FLK2 from January 2024. The dates for the next assessment window are as follows:
The booking process will remain the same but with more dates available. Subject to availability, candidates will be able to pick whichever date in each week they prefer. For example, a candidate may prefer to sit FLK1 on Tuesday 16 January and FLK2 on Wednesday 24 January. Those sitting the assessments in different time zones will also benefit from less rigidity on exam start times. Please note that candidates will see the available test centres for each day when they are booking. Not all test centres will be available every day.
We have introduced this now that the SQE is more established to allow greater flexibility for candidates on assessments dates and improved test centre availability. All subsequent SQE1 assessment windows will follow this same pattern.
So that we can offer more choice to candidates about when they sit the assessment, but maintain the integrity of the assessment, there will be different papers in an assessment window. We will therefore be introducing a system of scaled scoring to enable us to still achieve accurate and fair comparisons between test takers. Scaled scores are routinely used in high stakes professional assessments, for example, in medicine, accountancy and the New York State Bar.
The number of questions a candidate answers correctly out of the 180 questions on each FLK is called the ‘raw’ score. If two individuals with the same ability take different papers their raw scores might differ due to the varying difficulty of the papers. Converting the raw score to a scaled score allows scores to be directly compared to reflect the candidates’ relative performance, despite any differences between the assessments.
Candidates will be given their raw score. They will also be given their mark expressed as a scaled score figure out of 500. The pass mark will always be 300.
Following feedback from candidates, the candidate results page will now provide a breakdown of results by practice area as follows:
This will enable candidates to clearly see the practice areas they have performed best in and those where they may have not performed as well. By comparing these results against the information provided in the statistical report they will gain deeper insight on their relative performance. For those who may need to resit the assessment, this will assist in identifying areas of focus to better prepare for their next attempt.
This new, more detailed way of presenting results will be introduced for the January 2024 SQE1. We will update the website in the coming months with images of a results page and further explanation.
As well as providing candidates with more information, we plan to share more data with training providers. Training providers will receive anonymised data on how their candidates have performed, as a group, in each practice area. This is to assist them in their course development. The data will include all candidates who have indicated on the monitoring and maximising diversity survey that they have trained with that training provider. We will only provide this data if there are sufficient entries in the survey from candidates so that they cannot be identified. We are still developing the exact format of the data we will provide but it will show performance of that group of candidates affiliated with that training provider by practice area.
This additional information will be made available from the January 2024 SQE1 sitting.
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