SQE Study Group: Where to Find One for SQE1 and SQE2

Build an SQE study group from people booked into the same sitting: your firm's intake, your prep course or an online board. Give it a different job for each exam. For SQE1, mark yourselves against the SRA's 130 sample questions from live papers; for SQE2, split into pairs who play client and solicitor out loud.

Two exams, two kinds of group

SQE1 tests what the SRA calls functioning legal knowledge in two parts, FLK1 and FLK2, across 14 subject and practice areas, ethics among them (SRA, September 2026). Each part is a day of two sessions, 2 hours 33 minutes each. Every question is single best answer: a scenario, a lead-in and five plausible options, with only one right. From January 2027 a session holds 85 questions instead of 90, and each session covers its own group of subjects, still in random order.

SQE2 tests six skills in 16 written and oral exercises (SRA). They are client interviewing with an attendance note or legal analysis, advocacy, legal research, legal writing, legal drafting, and case and matter analysis. You take it after passing SQE1, unless you're an LPC graduate qualifying under the transitional rules. Written assessments, SQE1's and SQE2's, have been sat in 50 countries, but the SQE2 oral exercises only in England and Wales (SRA, January 2026).

The fees are from the SRA's board report of March 2026. SQE2 tests knowledge as well as skills, and that knowledge is SQE1's. So an LPC graduate in an SQE2 group has ground to cover that the others have just been examined on. Under the transitional rules, those candidates passed SQE2 at 47% to 62% across the four sittings in the SRA's latest annual report. Candidates who had passed SQE1 managed 79% to 85%.

Finding an SQE study group at work, on a course or online

• Your firm. The SRA doesn't record who's sponsored, but it notes that many of the larger firms that sponsor candidates require them to sit SQE1 in January. If yours does, your intake already shares a date.
• Your prep course. Richard Hood, who worked as a consultant while studying, puts it plainly in the SRA's own case studies: join or form a study group "if you can". His course ran weekly student group discussions, and another candidate's included tutor groups. Ask whether yours does before you build one.
• Online boards. Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram all have SQE groups. Look for posts that name a sitting and a part (FLK1, FLK2 or SQE2), and check who runs the group. Keep your phone number and your SQE account login to yourself.
• StudyDuo. SQE isn't an interest in Find Partners, but Law is: search for it with your country and city, then follow or message people who post your sitting.

For a first call with people you met online, our checklist for online study rooms covers what to share and what to keep back.

January and July sit differently

The standard is the same at every sitting, the SRA says. Yet January pass rates have run 10 to 15 points above July's in each of the last three years (SRA, 29 September 2026). July draws more people resitting, and resitters pass less often. With its January 2026 results and the board report, that gives these SQE1 pass rates:

July's first-timers fall behind too: in July 2025 they were "generally weaker" than January's, the board report says. Resitting is harder still. "Typically, around 20% of those who resit SQE1 pass," according to the SRA's four-year review. To July 2025, 82.1% of everyone who had passed did it at the first attempt. So match on the attempt as well as the sitting: a first try and a third are different projects, even in the same week of July.

SQE1: score yourselves against real candidates

The SRA has published 220 SQE1 sample questions (board report). Of these, 130 were used in live assessments, and for each one Kaplan, which runs the exam, published the share of candidates who answered it correctly. The other 90 date from the launch and were never pre-tested. The board report also records candidates' feedback that some providers' and publishers' practice questions didn't reflect the live ones. Kaplan has since run workshops for them on how SQE1 questions are written.

That makes the 130 an SQE study group's shared yardstick:

1. Sit the same block alone and timed, at the 2027 pace: 85 questions in 2 hours 33 minutes. The 130 make one full session and half of another.
2. Log three things per question: your answer, whether it was right, and the share of live candidates who got it right.
3. Meet on the misses most live candidates got right. Those are the marks you lost and they didn't. Questions that most candidates also missed come last.
4. Hide the options first. For each question you take together, one person reads the scenario and the lead-in aloud. Everyone commits to an answer in their own words, then the five options go up and you see whose answer survives.
5. Keep provider banks for solo volume. Bring only the questions that read like the SRA's to the meeting.

SQE2: one of you plays the client

The oral exercises need a voice on the other side of the table: a client to interview, a judge to address. Practising with a peer in that seat has some evidence behind it, from medicine. Hans Martin Bosse and colleagues randomly assigned 103 fifth-year medical students to communication training by peer role play, by trained actors, or to no training (Patient Education and Counseling, 2012). Both trainings raised scores on a six-station practical exam over the controls. Peer role play raised them more, mainly in understanding the other person's perspective. It's one trial, about talking with parents of ill children, not clients, so take it as a reason to try role play, not a promise.

A pair session from the SRA's own SQE2 samples, which come with a written discussion of the answers and legal-point guidance:

1. Split the paper. The partner playing the client reads the whole sample, answers included; the one playing the solicitor reads only the task.
2. Run it timed, as on the day, and write the attendance note straight after the interview.
3. The client marks what was missed: every fact they held that the solicitor never asked about, and every point of advice the discussion has and the note doesn't.
4. Swap seats on the next sample. Advocacy works the same way, with the partner as the judge.

Kaplan added two SQE2 samples in December 2025. In an SQE study group of two, run each sample twice with roles reversed, so both of you take the solicitor's chair for every scenario. Interviews and advocacy are spoken, so book them as a 1:1 session: two people on camera with microphones on, both with a verified photo. The written exercises suit Focus Room, where mics stay off.

Around a job and qualifying work experience

Qualifying also takes two years' full-time qualifying work experience or equivalent (SRA). In the case studies, Kieran Ng gained his experience working full time and studied part time. Kadija Conteh, a paralegal at a charity, says self-study "can be lonely and challenging". Fix the group's evening once, so a busy week at work doesn't reopen it, and plan the weeks between meetings with our guide to exam prep around a full-time job. American bar candidates build their groups around graded essays instead: see how a US bar exam group works. For quiet hours on camera with others, an online study group is open whenever you are.