Why it’s not too late to save the SQE

Amid marking howlers and failure to deliver on transparency pledges, the profession is losing confidence in the new Solicitors Qualifying Exam. It all boils down to lack of leadership, says legal education godfather Professor Nigel Savage. Will anyone step up?

Now that the dust has settled on the SQE exam results fiasco, it’s a good time to reflect. We’ve all made mistakes; the test is how you handle them with swift comms and appropriate sensitivity.

Judging by the student response across social media and websites like Legal Cheek, I’m not sure that happened. I know anecdotally from my own network that there are serious issues in the administration of the SQE.

However, that shouldn’t detract from the strategy. I supported the reform and its already delivering on some of the objectives. The concept of qualifying work experience instead of the training contract has removed a huge bottle neck, particularly for paralegals and the apprenticeship market will eventually restore the old five-year route of qualifying entirely from within the workplace.

Undergraduate law schools cannot ignore the SQE and do so at their peril. They will be judged on their outputs and cannot lay all the blame on the new prep providers. Meanwhile, there is greater competitive pressure from new providers, some of whom have brought substantial investment into the market from overseas.

So where has SQE creator the Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) fallen short? The strategy was right, but they have failed to deliver on tactics. To borrow a quote from warfare: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory”, which is presumably why the SRA are saying there will be no changes for ten years. I attended some of the early meetings where we were assured that the SRA would publish league tables on where candidates completed their law degrees and prep courses. Indeed, it was a requirement raised in the Legal Services Board (LSB) approval when they stated: “it is essential that the SRA delivers on its commitments to monitoring and evaluation including making all reports, data and assessment of these for public consumption”.

There doesn’t seem to be any immediate prospect of publication, the excuse being that such data is not available. Surely if the application form to register for the SQE required students to provide that information it would already be available. Given the SRA’s wider responsibility in terms of consumer protection (not to mention the LSB) it is surely in the public interest for all students, parents and employers to have access to this data given the level of investment they are making in the profession.

It has always been argued that the data requirement shouldn’t extend to undergraduate schools because they are regulated by other bodies, but those regulators won’t have access to such data and are not likely to ask for it unless the SRA supply it. The American Bar Association publishes annually a comprehensive set of data for all accredited law schools on success rates in the State Bar exams as a form of consumer protection — and they have 198 schools and 117,000 students to manage!

I think there is a marked lack of interest, leadership and ownership in the sector from the LSB, the Law Society and the SRA, especially in representing the interests of the student consumers making their way through the system. I think some of the tactical issues are falling between the gaps as between regulation and membership — and amid the posturing much of what the Law Society used to engage in to support the framework has been forgotten.

LawCAB provides real support for student applicants and does some gathering of data, plus there are some excellent pockets of tactical leadership such as the recent initiatives emanating from the City of London Law Society. The danger is that such leadership is fragmented and leads to duplication of scarce resources. I saw this happen many years when the pro-bono movement gathered speed, lots of very worthy projects but not co-ordinated which resulted huge duplication of resources eventually mitigated by the appointment of a Pro-bono Tsar.

Universities are facing the perfect storm, with law schools — even research-led ones — facing huge challenges which put at risk their very existence and work in key areas such as justice, diversity and overseas links. Such law schools are now located in ‘Super Faculties’ where they compete for resources with other disciplines who may be supported by external organisations which are more vociferous and proactive than their legal counterparts. I well remember when the Legal Practice Course (LPC) was first introduced, and the Law Society appointed the fearsome Paulene Collins to manage validation visits and rate providers on a scale of excellent to unsatisfactory. If the provider was not providing sufficient resource, or falling short on key issues such as diversity, they would be highlighted in the report. That provided a framework to address changing patterns in the legal services market and highlight real innovation . That no longer exists and the market has to be informed on the basis of social media and marketing puff.

In the area of apprenticeships some vice chancellors are reluctant to support them because they are regulated and monitored by OFSTED and inspectors may not have sufficient expertise in some degree level fields. Surely the SRA and Law Society could train individuals with specialist expertise to join such panels and work with OFSTED to encourage more universities to embrace the route?

There has been much innovation across the sector, particularly the SME sector, but I have been surprised by how much of the old training contract regime has been retained in the City firms. I thought that the SQE would provoke some radical changes not least driven by the Richard Susskind future of law agenda ,with a reduction in the numbers but much greater investment in professional development, taking recruits to a higher level quicker. Instead, the firms are engaging in a remuneration battle which is just driving up their cost base.

I guess my main point is that there doesn’t seem be any ‘ownership’ of legal education in its broadest sense. If the findings of the recent University of Exeter Report are to be implemented regulators are going to have to be more interventionist. There must be a clear role for the Law Society in coordinating the tactical issues for aspirant solicitors, but they are hidebound by the fact that they cannot admit students — or anyone else — into membership. I also feel that much more could be done to make the new qualification more accessible to students overseas by setting up test centres in key jurisdictions. Global legal services are an important sector for the UK economy and encouraging lawyers overseas to acquire the professional status without the need to travel would add value to sustaining the pre-eminence of English law globally.

Professor Nigel Savage previously ran three law schools under three different solicitor qualifying regimes. He led Nottingham Law School through the switch from Law Society Finals to the LPC, was then the CEO of The University of Law and finally headed up The College of Legal Practice as it launched to deliver the SQE. He no longer has any law school affiliations.