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

The Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) resulted in law degrees tending to be similar in design, with compulsory foundation modules at their core. The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) represents a significant change to solicitor qualification and potentially frees universities from the constraints of the foundations. There was also speculation that some universities would feel pressure to align undergraduate curricula to the SQE. This paper makes a contribution to knowledge by undertaking the first content analysis of LLB webpages since the SQE’s implementation. The data reveals that: (1) law schools still overwhelmingly require mandatory study of all the foundations; (2) there has been an incremental shift towards vocationalism; (3) a small minority of webpages may be overstating the extent that their LLB prepares students for the SQE; and (4) a significant proportion of webpages contain factually inaccurate or confusing information about programmes or routes to qualification. It 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. We present a novel explanation as to why this is the case, based on institutional theory and organisational strategic theory.