Since sitting SQE2 in April 2022 — as part of the very first cohort, with no roadmap and no one who had done it before — I’ve had more than 3,500 candidates enrol in my materials.
That’s a lot of revision plans, a lot of mock feedback, and a lot of results days. And across all of it, some clear patterns have emerged.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
How you prepare matters more than what you prepare with
This might be the most important thing on this list.
I’ve known candidates who self-studied with limited materials and passed. I’ve known candidates who bought every resource available and still didn’t. The difference wasn’t the resources — it was what they actually did with their time.
Yes, you need good materials to learn the FLK from, and you need mocks to practise with. But buying an extra course or an additional outline isn’t going to move the needle if the fundamentals aren’t in place.
Those fundamentals are straightforward: know the FLK, do timed practice, understand each assessment type, and be able to perform under exam conditions. Everything else is secondary. No resource — however good — can do that work for you.
Different people need different amounts of time
“How long is enough?” is one of the questions I get asked most often. And the honest answer is: it depends on you.
I’ve known people who studied full-time for four weeks and passed. I’ve known people who studied part-time for six months and didn’t. Again, it comes back to what you’re actually doing — not how many weeks you’ve clocked up.
That said, three months of part-time study is a realistic and achievable standard for most people. But it might not be enough if you have a lot going on in your life, if you struggle with memorising things, or if you need more time for certain subjects to click.
Be honest with yourself. How many hours can you genuinely dedicate each week? How quickly do things tend to stick for you? Your timeline should be built around your honest answers to those questions — not someone else’s experience.
SQE2 is not a pure skills exam — and this misconception costs people
A lot of candidates come into SQE2 prep believing it’s mainly about legal writing and speaking — that it’s skills-based, and you don’t need to know a huge amount of law.
That’s not true. And it’s one of the most expensive misconceptions to hold.
The majority of questions on SQE2 are legal knowledge questions. The exam is, first and foremost, a knowledge assessment. The skills — writing, advocacy, client interview — matter enormously, but they have to be built on a solid foundation of FLK knowledge. Without that, the skills alone won’t get you there.
Active recall of the law is not optional. It’s the foundation everything else sits on.
Passing SQE1 does not mean you’ll pass SQE2
These are two completely different exams, and one has no bearing on the other.
SQE1 is a knowledge recognition exam — multiple choice, testing whether you can identify the right answer when you see it. SQE2 is a knowledge and skills exam — testing whether you can retrieve the law, apply it to novel facts, and communicate it clearly under time pressure.
Doing well in SQE1 is genuinely no indication of how you’ll perform in SQE2. The preparation required is fundamentally different. Candidates who sailed through SQE1 sometimes struggle with SQE2 precisely because the approach that worked there doesn’t transfer.
Treat them as separate challenges. Prepare for SQE2 on its own terms.
You don’t need to have done SQE1 recently to be ready for SQE2
Many candidates worry about the gap between SQE1 and SQE2 — whether too much time has passed, whether they’ve lost ground, whether they need to go back and revise SQE1 material before they can tackle SQE2.
In my view: no.
I had a significant gap between sitting the QLTS MCT — the predecessor to SQE1 — and sitting SQE2. And if anything, that experience reinforced what I already believed: they’re separate exams that require separate preparation. The gap between them doesn’t matter nearly as much as people think. What matters is how you prepare for SQE2 when you get there.
Start from where you are. Prepare specifically for what SQE2 demands. The time in between is largely irrelevant.
The through line
Three thousand five hundred candidates later, the pattern is consistent.
The people who pass SQE2 are not necessarily the ones who spent the most money, bought the most resources, or had the most time. They’re the ones who prepared actively, practiced under timed conditions, knew the law well enough to retrieve and apply it, and were honest with themselves about what they needed.
That’s the formula. It’s not glamorous. But it works.