Finished Your SQE1 Exams? 5 things I wish I knew about SQE2 after finishing SQE1

The marathon is over. You’ve walked out of the exam hall, your brain is thoroughly fried, and the sheer volume of law you've grappled with for months is finally behind you. Congratulations on getting through the monumental challenge that is SQE1.

Now, you find yourself in the strange, quiet limbo of waiting for results. It’s a period filled with a mix of exhaustion and anxiety. As you start to look ahead, the next peak to climb, SQE2, comes into view. So, what can you do now? How do you prepare for what’s next without burning out or getting ahead of yourself?

Here are 5 things I wish I knew before I started preparing for SQE2.

First, What Exactly is SQE2?

Before we dive into the tips, let's quickly demystify the exam itself. Unlike SQE1, which tests your Functioning Legal Knowledge (FLK), SQE2 assesses your practical legal skills. It’s designed to see if you can apply your knowledge and act like a competent, newly qualified solicitor.

The assessment is made up of 16 individual tasks, known as "stations," which take place over several days. These stations test six key skills:

• Oral Skills:

  • Client Interview and Attendance Note/Legal Analysis

  • Advocacy

• Written Skills:

  • Case and Matter Analysis

  • Legal Research

  • Legal Writing

  • Legal Drafting

These skills are tested in the context of five practice areas: Criminal Litigation; Dispute Resolution; Property Practice; Wills and Intestacy, and Trusts; and Business Organisations, Rules and Procedures.

With that in mind, here are five key things to consider while you wait for your SQE1 results.

1. The Unskippable First Step: Take a Real Break

The SQE1 process is long, stressful, and incredibly demanding. We cannot stress this enough: you must take time to rest and recover. The temptation to immediately be "productive" is high, but jumping straight into SQE2 preparation is a recipe for burnout. The SQE2 is just as demanding, and you need to face it with a full battery. If possible, take some time to look after yourself and recharge.

2. Your FLK is Crucial – But Recall is Different

As much as you may want to purge all that legal knowledge from your brain, your FLK is the absolute bedrock of SQE2. In my opinion, SQE2 is still very much a knowledge test; if you don't know what the law your being questioned on is, you won't be able to let your skills shine through.

However, the type of recall required is completely different. SQE1 has multiple-choice answers that can prompt your memory. In SQE2, you are faced with a page that contains facts but no answers for you to choose from. You need to pull the relevant legal principles from your memory and apply them to the facts. This is why it's essential to focus on active recall when studying. Once you've had a proper rest, you can start warming up your FLK with techniques that force you to actively retrieve information, rather than passively reading it.

3. When to do Mocks

You might be tempted to try a mock exam straight away to see where you stand. We’d advise against this. Mocks can be expensive and time-consuming, and to get the most out of them, its best to have two things first: a strong FLK base and a solid structure for each skill that works for you. Doing a mock without these foundations can be demoralising and an inefficient use of your time and money.

You can't go wrong with our free questions!

If you do want to get a feel for the questions, we offer free sample questions for you to use (it's our way of trying to make the SQE more accessible). When you are ready for a full simulation, our 16-station mock exam is, in our slightly biased opinion, the best way to mentally prepare for the real thing.

If you’re interested click here.

4. A Pragmatic Approach to Legal Drafting

Legal drafting is often the skill that students find the most daunting. It’s important to know that you cannot prepare for every single document that could possibly come up. Trying to do so will just stress you out and will ultimately be a waste of your valuable time.

Instead, focus your energy on understanding the law that the document is trying to test you on. So for example board minutes will be testing you on company decision making processes and witness statements will be testing you on the structure of a witness statement.

Get familiar with the most common documents that appear, such as wills, particulars of claim, and board minutes. Mastering the technique and structure for these will give you a transferable skill set you can apply to any document the exam throws at you.

5. Building a Structure For Your Revision

While keeping your FLK warm is vital, it’s equally critical that you develop a clear structure for answering the questions in each station. A good structure is the framework that allows you to dump all that legal knowledge onto the paper coherently and effectively. It will make your life much easier under intense time pressure.

Practice question sample answers can often seem unrealistic and demoralising (that’s a blog post for another day!), but they are incredibly useful for determining and effective structure. Don't focus on replicating the perfect answer. Instead, analyse how the answer is laid out. Look at the headings they use, how they introduce the issues, and how they apply the law to the facts. Find a structure that makes sense to you and practice it until it becomes second nature.

Conclusion

Navigating the time between finishing SQE1 and starting your SQE2 preparation is a challenge in itself. The key is to be intentional: rest properly, keep your knowledge warm without burning out, and focus on understanding the how and why of SQE2 before diving into intense practice. By breaking it down and focusing on structure, you can build a solid foundation for success.

Of course, a big part of this planning comes down to timing. That’s why in our next blog post, we’ll be tackling one of the most common questions we hear: ‘How long should you have between SQE1 and SQE2?’ We’ll break down the factors to consider so you can make the best decision for your circumstances.

In the meantime, if you want to get a gentle, no-pressure feel for the types of questions you'll face, don’t forget to check out our free practice questions. And to make sure you don’t miss our next post on timing, along with other tips and resources, be sure to sign up for our newsletter.

For now, take a well-deserved breath, be proud of how far you’ve come, and we’re wishing you the very best for results day.