What to Do in the Weeks Before SQE2 (And What to Definitely Stop Doing)
- lawmaterevision
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
A few weeks. That's what's left before the SQE2 written assessments on 28 April.
Most people in the weeks before SQE2 do one of two things: they panic-revise everything in sight, or they quietly convince themselves it's too late to change anything. Both are mistakes, and both cost marks.
You don't need to have signed up for an intensive course to make this window count. What you need is a clear sense of where to put your energy, and just as importantly, what to stop doing. Here's both.
Stop re-reading your notes
This is the single most common mistake in the final weeks of SQE2 prep, and it's dangerous precisely because it feels productive. When you re-read familiar material, it starts to look like mastered material. That feeling of fluency is reassuring. But it's misleading.
There's a name for it: the illusion of competence. Re-reading creates familiarity, not recall. And SQE2 is testing recall: the ability to retrieve the right legal framework, apply it to a scenario you haven't seen before, and communicate it coherently under time pressure. Research by Karpicke and Roediger, published in Science, found that students who tested themselves after studying retained significantly more material than those who simply re-read their notes, and the gap widened the longer the time between studying and testing.
You cannot practise retrieval by reading. The only way to train that skill is to do it, repeatedly, under something that resembles real conditions.
Put the notes down.
Don't try to plug every gap from scratch
Two weeks is not enough time to properly learn a new practice area. If there are topics you haven't thoroughly covered, resist the urge to start them now. You're more likely to undermine what you've already built than to add something solid on top.
Instead, triage. Identify the areas where your knowledge is patchy but present, and consolidate those. Solid preparation across most of the syllabus is more valuable than exhaustive preparation across a handful of topics and nothing useful left for the rest.
This matters especially because of how SQE2 is marked. The SRA weights each assessment station so that 50% of your mark comes from your application of legal knowledge, and 50% from your legal skills; they're equal. If your SQE1 knowledge has softened since you sat it, now is the time to sharpen the core principles in the practice areas you'll be tested on. Not learning them from scratch. Just reactivating what's already there.
Do questions properly, under time pressure
This is the most valuable use of the next two weeks, and it doesn't mean working through a question and glancing at the model answer. It means setting a timer, typing your answer as you would in the real assessment, and then doing an honest comparison with a well-constructed model answer.
The SQE2 written assessments are tight on time. According to the SRA, Case and Matter Analysis is 60 minutes, Legal Research is 60 minutes, Legal Writing is 30 minutes, and Legal Drafting is 45 minutes. If you haven't been practising under those exact conditions, the time pressure alone will cost you marks, not because you don't know the law, but because you haven't built the automatic structure and presentation that frees up mental energy for the actual legal analysis.
Doing timed questions under exam conditions isn't just revision. It's building a skill that only develops through repetition.
Need more questions to work through? MyLawMate's Practice Bundle includes 24 additional SQE2-style questions to practise under timed conditions.
Read the performance indicators. Most candidates never have.
The SRA publishes performance indicators for every SQE2 assessment type: Case and Matter Analysis, Legal Research, Legal Writing, Legal Drafting, Advocacy, and Client Interview and Attendance Note. These documents set out, in plain terms, what competent performance looks like and what non-competent performance looks like.
Most candidates have never read them properly. That's a free advantage. Go and take it.
An hour going through the indicators for the assessment types you find hardest won't tell you what questions are coming, but it will tell you exactly what the assessor is doing with your paper when they mark it. In an exam where the gap between a pass and a fail can come down to whether you addressed the client's specific concern rather than the general legal position, that is genuinely useful information.
Ethics won't be flagged. Start looking for it now.
This is the thing that catches even well-prepared candidates. Ethics and professional conduct are embedded across all 16 SQE2 assessments, written and oral. The SRA's assessment specification is explicit on this point: ethical issues will not be identified in the question. It is the candidate's job to spot them.
In practice, that means your Case and Matter Analysis, your Legal Writing task, your Drafting exercise, your client interview, and both advocacy assessments may each contain a professional conduct issue sitting in the facts, waiting to be noticed. Conflicts of interest, duties of confidentiality, obligations to the court, client money rules. These can appear in scenarios that don't look, on the surface, like ethics questions at all.
The candidates who drop marks here aren't the ones who don't know the rules. They're the ones so focused on the substantive legal analysis that they forget to run the professional conduct check. Build that habit now, before it costs you.
The orals need work now, not after the written
With written assessments running 28 to 30 April, it's tempting to leave the orals until after. The oral assessments don't begin until 5 May at the earliest, so there's time, right? Not for the kind of preparation the orals actually need.
The four oral stations, two client interview and attendance note assessments and two advocacy assessments, require a different kind of preparation from the written paper. The advocacy station involves 45 minutes of preparation followed by a 15-minute submission to a judge. The client interview requires you to complete a written attendance note and legal analysis by hand within 25 minutes of the interview ending.
Structure is everything in the orals, and structure only becomes automatic through repetition. Your client interview framework and your advocacy structure need to be things you execute, not things you construct in the room. Spend some time in the next two weeks practising out loud. Even talking yourself through a submission to an empty room is more useful than reading about how to do it.
If you want to focus on the Oral Exams, explore the Oral Exam Bundle for realistic questions and sample answers to help you address your weak areas.
The final few days: less is more
Do your last substantial question practice session by the Wednesday or Thursday before your written assessments. After that, consolidate: a focused review of your core legal frameworks and key principles for the practice areas being tested. Nothing new, nothing heavy.
The night before: sort your logistics, review your structures one final time, and sleep. This is practical, not motivational: sleep deprivation measurably impairs the kind of analytical thinking and legal recall that SQE2 is testing. An hour of cramming at midnight is not worth what it costs you the next morning.
The morning of: eat, get there early, and trust the preparation you've done. The SQE2 pass rate has sat between 75% and 82% across most sittings since the assessment launched. Candidates who prepare seriously, pass. You've done the work.
Mentally Prepare yourself
If you want to make these last weeks count, focused question practice under real conditions is the most efficient use of the time you have left. MyLawMate's Mock Bundle is crafted by an individual who has successfully taken and passed the exam, aiming to mentally prepare you for it. It includes model answers that demonstrate what a real candidate can achieve under time constraints, rather than idealized responses that wouldn't be feasible within a 30-minute timeframe at a keyboard.
There is plenty of time in these last weeks to make a real difference. Use it.
Not ready to buy yet? Start with the MyLawMate free bundle and see the quality for yourself.
Comments