Some of the 175 candidates wrongly told they failed their SQE exam will have had their training contracts rescinded or lost their jobs, the City of London Law Society's training committee has said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and SQE assessment provider Kaplan apologised yesterday after revealing that a marking error saw 175 of the 6,626 candidates who sat SQE1 in January wrongly told they failed one of the two ‘functioning legal knowledge’ assessments. Candidates must pass both assessments to pass SQE1 and the marking error was only spotted after unsuccessful candidates appealed their original results.

City of London Law Society’s training committee posted on LinkedIn that the impact for the affected candidates would be significant. ‘Some have had their training contracts rescinded or their employment terminated, some have had their start dates deferred, some have chosen to abandon their prospective legal career,’ the committee said.

The committee said: ‘We encourage any employer with impacted candidates to look extremely carefully at the matter. We anticipate that this will include proactive and speedy consideration of reinstatement of the employment status of impacted candidates, including those for whom employment has been terminated and/or offers/training contracts rescinded.’

Patrick McCann, chair of the training committee, said he hoped yesterday’s news ‘gives fast-rescinding employers pause. It occurs to me that waiting until an appeals process has happened before making significantly impactful employment decisions might now seem a sensible approach to take’.

A Law Society spokesperson said Chancery Lane would be engaging closely with the SRA ‘to understand what steps are being taken to ensure any future changes are managed more successfully’. The Society encouraged candidates affected by the marking error to turn to the Junior Solicitors Network, mental wellbeing charity LawCare or Society’s pastoral care helpline for support.

Are you one of the affected students? Please get in touch.

 

This article is now closed for comment.