Former home secretary Suella Braverman KC has entered the row over the Solicitors Qualifying Examination - decrying what she calls ‘snowflake’ lawyers who have called for reform.
Nearly 400 aspiring lawyers have so far signed a petition set up a week ago by a trainee solicitor who says the SQE has taken a severe toll on their mental, financial and physical wellbeing. Regulatory chiefs have admitted that the SQE has had ‘teething problems’ since it was introduced in 2021.
However writing in today’s Telegraph, Braverman was unimpressed with the petition’s assertion that the SQE is ‘disproportionately challenging’ and ‘biased towards certain backgrounds and learning styles’.
The Conservative MP and barrister summarised the petitioners' assertion as: 'We didn’t do well, and it must be someone else’s fault'. She remarked: ‘There could hardly be a more telling parable of our times. The snowflake sensibility - once confined to undergraduate common rooms and the wilder fringes of social media - has now infected even the corridors of legal ambition.
‘The future custodians of our justice system are not asking for a level playing field; they are asking for the pitch to be tilted until everyone scores.’
Braverman recalled having sat more than a dozen legal examinations across three jurisdictions - at university in Cambridge, the Sorbonne and the New York Bar - and said she lost a stone in weight during one set of ‘particularly punishing exams’.
‘They were not “inclusive”’, Braverman added. ‘They were not designed to reflect my personal learning style. They were difficult. That was the point.
‘The whole premise of a professional exam is that it provides an independent measure of competence. It is meant to be hard. It is meant to discriminate: not on the basis of race or class, but on the basis of skill, preparation and effort. That is not injustice. That is fairness.’
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