The SQE is a monster sized syllabus. Students naturally struggle to retain the vast legal knowledge set out by the SRA as they prepare to sit their SQE1 assessments. It may also be the reason why students are not doing as well on FLK 2 (Day 2) as they put all their study energy into FLK1 (Day 1), leaving them exhausted and ill prepared for Day 2.
When faced with tough decisions about preparing to study, a question that we are often asked is: “Is there any part of the SQE syllabus that I can skip over?” The answer to that is, “Yes!”.
No course provider is likely to give you the advice, we are about to give you, but that is the benefit of Revision Killer. It is all about passing and not selling you a course tied to learning materials.
Having examined the SQE syllabus and taught the LPC for many years, we observed how many of our best students made strategic decisions on which areas of law to study. They know certain areas were more examinable than others, and while in an ideal study environment they would have liked to have fully studied every topic, to do so was not practical and was causing them stress and burn-out.
Therefore, advice we have learnt to give, based on our and their SQE experience is that if you are struggling to cover ground, then ditch studying Solicitors Accounts and Tax.
This is why:
1. Solicitors Accounts and Tax are not examined separately but in the context of other subject areas. Their question allocation is small (usually less than 5%) as they share their overall question allocation with other subject areas such as Property Practice, Business Practice and Wills & Probate. Moreover, the fact that Solicitors Accounts and Tax are not examined separately by Kaplan, reaffirms our judgment call that they are not big examination topics.
2. As a result, the amount of time and effort required to study Solicitors Accounts and Tax will be disproportionate to the reward. However, if you are not comfortable with ditching them entirely, then limit your study to learning the basics of these topics as many of the questions are simplistic.
3. Lastly, as these topics are numbers based, many law student find them stressful to grasp. Sometimes it is better to accept your limitations and focus your study on areas that you know you can score higher on and thereby improve your overall pass mark.
Of courses, the final decision is yours, but this advice is based on our collective exam experience and may come in handy as you approach the assessment dates and are struggling to retain the huge amount of functioning legal knowledge demanded by the SQE.
Sunit Tejura is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Roehampton Law School and leads the Law School’s SQE Foundations Course. Prior to joining Roehampton University he worked at Kaplan for seven years teaching on their Legal Practice Course, Graduate Diploma in Law and writing multiple choice questions for the Qualified Lawyer Transfer Scheme (the precursor to the SQE). Sunit is a qualified Solicitor (England and Wales) and Attorney at Law (New York).