Solicitors Practice Course

Entry requirements

For entry requirements please visit our website.

Months of entry

September

Course content

Prepare for your SQE assessments and build a strong foundation for your future career as a solicitor.

Our Solicitors Practice Course is an academic LLM programme with the dual purpose of helping you in the process of qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales.

To qualify as a solicitor, most students must (1) sit the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) centralised assessment, the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), (2) undertake a 2-year period of Qualifying Work Experience (QWE), and (3) pass the SRA’s Character and Suitability test.

SQE itself is divided into two parts:

• SQE1 - the assessment of functioning legal knowledge (FLK)
• SQE2 - assessing a range of legal skills.

Your studies on the Solicitors Practice Course at Cardiff will allow you to explore a range of legal subjects. You will have the opportunity to develop your critical thinking skills and your ability to evaluate so that you are able to apply the knowledge you acquire to client facing problems. This will also provide you with an in-depth preparation for the external SQE1 assessment and for your QWE with a law firm or other employer.

You will have the opportunity to acquire and hone valuable legal skills through a process of reflection and refinement that will support your progress towards a professional career in the legal sector. This will also provide a base level for your future sit of the external SQE2 assessment (something you are likely to do towards the end of a 2-year QWE).

Through the LLM research project or reflective portfolio you will learn further important transferable skills that will help you in your future professional life: how to write and critically reason, how to write for and engage the reader, and how to reflect critically on your experience.

Overall, your study on the course will allow you to develop intellectual expertise and practical skills across a breadth of legal topics providing you with a strong foundation for your future career as a solicitor. You will acquire the skills, knowledge and attitudes to prepare you for your qualifying work experience, equip you to deal with the demands that are likely to be made of you in practice, and lay the foundation for your future practice as a solicitor by encouraging habits of competence, confidence and professionalism. Your studies will also help prepare you for your SQE1 assessments and give an introduction and foundation for SQE2.

Please note: The SQE assessments are external centralised assessments run by the SRA’s appointed assessment provider, Kaplan.

Fees and funding

If you’re a home-fee paying student, you can apply for a £3,000 Master’s Scholarship from Cardiff University to help cover the cost of this programme.