A trainee solicitor who started a petition calling for SQE reform has rebuked the former home secretary Suella Braverman KC for calling those signing it ‘snowflake’ lawyers.  

Nearly 400 people have signed the petition calling for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination to be reformed. The petition was 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.

Braverman, writing in the Telegraph, was unimpressed with what she claimed was the petition’s assertion that the SQE is ‘too hard, disproportionately challenging’ and ‘biased towards certain backgrounds and learning styles’.

‘The whole premise of a professional exam is that it provides an independent measure of competence. It is meant to be hard’, Braverman wrote. ‘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.’

Suella Braverman

A trainee solicitor has rebuked Braverman for the ‘snowflake’ jibe

Source: DW Images/Shutterstock

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Braverman attacks 'snowflake' solicitors over SQE petition

A trainee solicitor set up the online petition under the pseudonym Hannah Cox and has since published a comment addressed to Braverman, stating: ‘I don’t take particularly kindly to a failing politician misquoting me on a national platform. Maybe since your comprehension skills seemed to be compromised, you wouldn’t pass the SQE yourself? 

‘Nowhere in the petition did I claim that the exam was “too hard”. I’m not a wet lettuce for Christ sakes’, Cox said. ‘Suella, I suggest you don your reading spectacles and place your thinking cap firmly on and re-read.’

Cox stood by her claim the SQE was ‘disproportionately challenging’, pointing out the Solicitors Regulation Authority refuses to publish past papers to allow candidates to adequately prepare; that the cost is ‘extortionate’ (pointing to the New York bar which Cox said costs $250 for domestic candidates and $750 for foreign, while the SQE costs £4,760). She also said candidates are denied access to water during the exam.

‘I am somewhat disappointed that a KC could not identify the more nuanced points made within the petition. However, I guess that comes with the territory of using the penniless youth trying hard to succeed in your political point scoring’, Cox concluded.