SQE2 legal writing: format, timing and the seven criteria

Thirty minutes to write a letter or email as the solicitor on the matter. What the task gives you, the seven criteria, and why the recipient decides how you write.

Published

30 minutes to write a letter or an email, as the solicitor acting on the matter, on a computer. Seven criteria: four on skills, three on application of law.

It is the shortest of the written assessments, and the one where who you are writing to changes almost everything about what good looks like.

What you are given

An email from a partner explaining what is required. It may or may not come with documents.

The recipient varies, and the specification's list is not exhaustive: a client, a third party, the other side to litigation or to a transaction, or a partner inside your own firm. It may be set in the context of a negotiation.

That is the whole difficulty. A letter to an unrepresented third party, a letter to the other side's solicitor, and a note to your own partner are three different documents about the same facts. One criterion — language appropriate to the recipient — exists purely to score whether you noticed.

The seven criteria

| # | Criterion | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Include relevant facts | Skills | | 2 | Use a logical structure | Skills | | 3 | Advice and content are client and recipient focused | Skills | | 4 | Clear, precise, concise and acceptable language, appropriate to the recipient | Skills | | 5 | Apply the law correctly | Application of law | | 6 | Apply the law comprehensively | Application of law | | 7 | Identify ethical and professional conduct issues and resolve them | Application of law |

Criterion 3 says client and recipient focused, which is two tests rather than one. Writing to the other side, you are still acting for your client; the letter serves their objective while being pitched at someone who does not share it.

How to prepare

Read the partner's email as the brief it is. It tells you the recipient, the purpose and usually the points to cover. Those points are your structure.

Decide the register before the first sentence. Client: plain English, no unexplained terms. Other side: correct, measured, nothing conceded by accident. Partner: compressed, technical, no throat-clearing.

Thirty minutes is short. It rewards starting with a skeleton — purpose, the two or three points, the ask — over a polished opening paragraph and an unfinished middle.

Do not pad the law. Criteria 5 and 6 ask whether the law is right and sufficient for this problem, not whether you can restate it. The reader is a recipient, not an examiner wanting proof you revised.

Check for the conduct issue. Writing to an unrepresented party, or being asked to say something you should not, is exactly where criterion 7 lives.

Legal writing is one of four written assessments, alongside legal drafting, legal research and case and matter analysis. How they add up is on how SQE2 is marked.

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