The impact of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) on undergraduate legal education in England and Wales: A content Analysis

Addressing a gap in the literature, this paper makes a contribution to knowledge and understanding by undertaking the first content analysis of all university webpages since the SQE’s implementation to determine to what extent universities have: (1) moved away from the foundation subjects; (2) aligned their undergraduate curricula to SQE; (3) claim to prepare students for SQE; and (4) provide factually inaccurate or confusing information about programmes or routes to qualification. Traditionally the requirements of the Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) have resulted in law degrees tending to be similar in design with compulsory foundation modules at their core. The SQE represents a significant change to solicitor qualification. It potentially freed universities from the constraints of the foundations but there was also speculation that some universities would feel pressure to align undergraduate curricula to the SQE. While there has been much debate about the potential impact of the SQE on undergraduate legal education, there has been little empirical evidence of its impact to date. Our research addresses this and confirms an inherent irony: the deregulation of undergraduate solicitor education in England and Wales had led to more vocational alignment than experienced under the previous system but has not resulted in a significant shift away from the foundations.