SRA announces changes to the Solicitors Qualifying Examination

Anna O’Boyle is acting senior content and events coordinator at LawCareers.Net

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The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has announced changes to part one of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), including reducing the number of questions in the multiple-choice assessment, after trainee lawyers and other stakeholders raised concerns that the assessments were overly difficult and “disproportionately challenging”.

Under the new format, candidates will answer 20 fewer multiple-choice questions (340 instead of 360). The SRA said the changes were made after feedback that the exam “can feel rushed and pressurised”. Questions will also be grouped by subject area rather than presented in a randomised order, following complaints that the previous format made the assessment more challenging. The changes will take effect from the January 2027 SQE1 and will apply to all candidates, both those sitting for the first time and those resitting assessments.

The reforms follow criticism from hundreds of trainee solicitors who signed a petition last year claiming the exams were disproportionately difficult and favoured certain backgrounds and learning styles. The petition argued that the exams risked contributing to a lack of diversity in the legal profession. In the January 2026 testing, while 53% of candidates passed SQE1 overall, 67% of white candidates passed the test, compared with 47% of Asian candidates and 38% of Black candidates.

Commenting on the changes, the SRA said: “Making this change now, rather than after only a small number of deliveries, allows us to review a sufficient amount of assessment data to provide confidence that reducing the number of questions will both improve the candidate experience and retain the accuracy of the assessment.”

The College of Legal Practice welcomed the changes in a statement, but stated that “the reforms represent an improvement rather than the transformational change many aspiring solicitors need”. The College also pointed out that the changes fail to address what candidates have repeatedly identified as the most significant challenge of SQE1 – “the need to learn, retain and revise an enormous volume of legal knowledge across both FLK1 and FLK2 before sitting two demanding assessments within days of each other”.

The College added that trainees' concerns are less about the number of questions and the pace of the assessment, and more about finding sufficient time to prepare for two assessments while continuing to work, support families and meet financial commitments.

CEO of The College, Dr Giles Proctor, said: “Many highly capable candidates working in paralegal and legal support roles have significantly less study time available than candidates who can study full-time or whose qualification journey is fully sponsored. The assessment structure should not place those candidates at an avoidable disadvantage.”

Proctor added that “if the objective is to improve the SQE experience in a meaningful way, we believe the conversation now needs to move beyond question numbers and towards genuine flexibility in how candidates are assessed."

Find out more about the SQE by visiting our SQE Hub, sponsored by the University of Law.