In last week’s blog on the SQE, we discussed whether the SQE might kill off the training contract. The SQE certainly looks like a big shake up of legal education. So how are you going to prepare for it?
Currently, students who want to qualify as solicitors take the tried-and-trusted route of a law degree (or convert via the GDL) and then the LPC before starting a training contract. The LLB will still exist of course. But courses called the “GDL” and “LPC” probably won’t.
The SQE tests an extremely wide range of legal knowledge. Think of it as mash-up between the LLB, GDL and LPC syllabi. Some of the multiple-choice questions will also be fiendishly difficult and require real deep understanding of the subject matter. There will be a lot for students to learn!
That means that students (especially those without an LLB) are going to need to learn – and really understand – a lot of legal information. So there will be a lot of demand for courses like the GDL and LPC.
The SQE does not impose any requirement on students to have a law degree, nor to take any preparatory courses. Nor does the SRA regulate what those preparatory courses could be. If you think of the GDL or LPC in their simplest terms… as “preparatory” courses for solicitors, you can begin to see how a preparatory course might begin to develop for the SQE.
In fact, we’re already seeing this happen. BPP is launching a “PGDL” course – essentially a modified version of its GDL course with less EU law, more company law and more skills.
Given the lack of regulation of preparatory courses and the real need for students to learn a lot of law, it seems likely that a wide range of preparatory courses will pop up. Some of these will be very similar to what law schools currently offer, such as ULaw which (at the time of writing) still plans to offer its GDL course. Others will be slightly different, such as BPP’s PGDL course.
Courses that look similar to the LPC may also survive. One of the attractions for the current LPC for law firms is that students can choose electives directly relevant to legal practice, such as Family Law or Equity Finance. Many of the large law firms have helped set the syllabus for certain electives too, and will still want their prospective trainees to learn the same subject matter before starting work.
And other courses will appear – online-only versions for students looking to save money, or compressed “crammer” courses for students looking to accelerate their careers at any price.
So yes, there will be SQE preparatory courses – and plenty of them!
Look our for our blog next week on whether the SQE will improve diversity in the profession.