How to register for the SQE1 and SQE2 assessments.
How to verify your ID and what you need to provide.
What the survey is, and what it covers.
If you need help or assistance to sit your assessments.
If you are a qualified lawyer, you may be eligible for an exemption.
How to book the SQE1 and SQE2 assessments.
Find out how and when to book your SQE assessments.
Upcoming assessment dates, booking windows, and test centre locations.
Find out how you can take the SQE assessments in Welsh.
Everything you need to know about sitting the SQE1 and SQE2 assessments.
The assessment specification for both FLK1 and FLK2, including annexes and sample questions.
The specification for the written and oral assessments, including annexes and sample questions.
What to expect on the assessment days and how to claim mitigating circumstances.
How to get your results, how assessments are marked, how to resit an assessment, or make an appeal.
What to expect when you get your results, and how to resit any assessments.
Read and download SQE reports.
Learn about what the SQE is, who it's for and how much it costs.
Find out what the SQE is and how it works.
Find out who's eligible to take the SQE, including exemptions.
Find out how much the SQE will cost and how you can pay for it.
Find out what candidates say about their experience of the SQE.
Due to inactivity, and for security reasons, you will be automatically logged out of your SQE account in 1 minute.
Press ’continue’ to stay logged in.
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.
You will be assessed on six different legal skills in six types of exercise across 16 assessment stations (‘stations’), 12 written stations and 4 oral stations. The 12 written stations assess the candidate's skills of case and matter analysis, legal research, legal writing and legal drafting, while the four oral stations test skills across the areas of advocacy, interviewing and attendance note/legal analysis.
Each station is an individual ‘assessment’ that candidates take as part of SQE2. Advocacy (Dispute Resolution) is one station, legal drafting (Business organisations, rules and procedures) is another station, and so on. Your interview will be marked by the assessor (a professionally trained actor) playing the role of the client and will be marked on skills only. The attendance note and all other exercises will be marked by a qualified solicitor who will assess you on both skills and application of law.
Learn more: SQE2 assessment specification
Performance in each of the stations will be graded on a scale from A to F, with trained assessors making global professional judgements. Their judgements are related to the standard of competency of the assessment as set out in the SQE2 Assessment Specification, namely that of the just competent Day One solicitor (defined as level three of the SRA’s Threshold Standard).
Each station has assessment criteria which are set out in the SQE2 Assessment Specification. Marking is based on performance in each of the assessment criteria for that station graded on a scale from A-F as follows:
This grading will then be converted into numerical marks so that A = 5 marks and F = 0 marks. Candidates will see the numerical marks on their results page rather than the letter equivalents. A candidate can receive a score of 0 even if they have attempted a question. A score of 0 indicates that they have been judged to be well below the competency requirements for that assessment criterion or criteria, not that their answer has not been considered or not been marked. Please see the short explanatory video for more information on this.
The assessment criteria for each of the stations has been divided into marks for skills and marks for application of law. Each station has a percentage score calculated from the marks awarded for application of law, and for skills. Therefore the marks relating to legal skills are averaged into a single ‘skills’ score, and marks for the application of legal knowledge into a single ‘law’ score. These are combined with equal weighting to provide a total score for each station. The final candidate percentage score is an average of the 16 station totals. This is to make sure that adequate weighting is given to the quality of the advice provided.
Learn more: Marking and standard setting policy
You'll receive a range of results information, including the overall result of your assessment showing if you have passed SQE2 and a more detailed breakdown of marks for each assessment station. These will appear in your candidate account when results are released.
To help you understand what your results include and what they mean, visit Understanding what’s included in your SQE2 results.
For more insights into your results, you may wish to review the SQE statistical and annual reports.
Learn more: SQE2 statistical reports
Overall SQE2 pass marks are calculated using the station scores for each group of candidates who sit the same assessment. There can be multiple oral and written papers in an assessment window. This is to ensure that the assessment exercises for each day remain confidential, so that all candidates are treated fairly.
Despite there being different questions, they are all set at a similar difficulty level and test the same skills and application of legal knowledge. However, because questions can vary from day to day, a pass mark will be calculated for each set of dates and unique combination of stations. This is based on the written and oral questions which have been attempted.
As a result, the pass mark for SQE2 may differ across dates to reflect any small changes in the difficulty levels of the stations. To maintain equivalent standards, and to be fair to candidates, station scores adjust to compensate for any changes in difficulty.
The same approach is taken in successive sittings of both SQE1 and SQE2. This means the pass mark reflects the level of difficulty of actual questions used, so as to ensure a consistent standard and fairness between candidates, and over time.
Please see the Assessment Specification for more on the stations and scoring methods. Find out more about how the pass mark is set in the Marking and Standard Setting Policy.
You’ll find links at the bottom of your results page to help you:
Create your personal SQE account and book your assessments.
Find out what happens after passing the SQE and admission to the roll of solicitors.