SQE could damage legal aid areas of profession, say lawyers
updated on 21 February 2020
Changes introduced by the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) mean that aspiring social welfare lawyers will not receive the right training, practitioners claim.
Rachel Knowles, legal aid lawyer and head of legal practice at University College London’s Centre for Access to Justice, told The Times (£): “The wider implications of [the SQE] for the future of the profession and for access to justice are seriously concerning.”
The SQE is a two-stage series of exams that all prospective solicitors must pass to qualify, in addition to completing two years’ qualifying work experience. This means that as of 2021, students will no longer have to complete a law degree or law conversion, plus the Legal Practice Course and a training contract, to qualify as solicitors.
Siobhan Taylor-Ward, a member of Young Legal Aid Lawyers working at Merseyside Law Centre, said that because the SQE will not assess areas related to legal aid, the new postgraduate courses emerging to prepare students for the SQE may not provide training in “the small underdog areas like social welfare, employment, family and personal injury”.
Legal aid cuts have already reduced or removed fees for legal aid lawyers working in these areas, further disincentivising students laden with university debt to pursue careers outside commercial law. Meanwhile, the Solicitors Regulation Authority is removing social welfare law from its qualifying syllabus. “It looks like they don’t respect the work we are doing; it makes it easier for the government to say that lawyers are not needed in these areas,” Siobhan-Taylor said to The Times.
To address the problem, Chris Minnoch, chief executive of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said that commercial law schools must be encouraged to provide extra training beyond the core SQE requirements.
Julie Brannan, director of education and training at the SRA, said: “Requiring all solicitors to have a knowledge of all of these topics would not only push up costs for candidates, but limit opportunities for greater flexibility in training.”
