The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), which is due to replace the current system for entry to the profession in 2021, will lower professional standards, junior lawyers have warned.
In an open letter to Bob Neill MP, chair of the Justice Select Committee, last week, the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) called for the Legal Services Board’s decision to be reviewed. The JLD requested an evidence session and short inquiry into the decision.
The JLD says it has ‘has significant concerns about… the removal of the requirement to study academic law substantively, assessment by method of multiple-choice question examination, training requiring only “the opportunity” to develop the necessary competencies and sign-off being possible by a newly qualified solicitor who may not ever have met the trainee’.
