Picture this. You sit down opposite an "actor" client who has just told you their builder vanished mid-job and took a £6,000 deposit. The clock is running. Part of your brain is screaming about misrepresentation and breach of contract, while the other part is trying to remember whether you are supposed to talk or listen. Sound familiar? This is the moment the SQE2 Client Interviewing assessment is built around, and far too many candidates walk in treating it like an oral law exam.
It is not. By the time you reach SQE2 you have already proven your legal knowledge through SQE1 — the two FLK1 and FLK2 papers of 180 single best answer questions each. SQE2 asks a different question: can you actually behave like a solicitor in front of a real person? Client Interviewing is where that gets tested most directly, and the good news is that it rewards method, not luck.
What the SQE2 Client Interviewing task actually involves
The skill comes in two linked parts. First, a live interview with a client (a trained role-player) lasting around 25 minutes. Then, immediately afterwards, a written attendance note or follow-up document recording what happened and setting out advice and next steps. Both halves are assessed, and both carry marks for legal skills and, separately, for the substance of your law.
Assessors are looking at things like whether you established a rapport, identified the client's concerns and objectives, used a sensible questioning structure, and gave the client a clear sense of what comes next. You are not expected to deliver a finished legal opinion in the room. You are expected to gather facts properly, spot the legal issues, and reassure a worried human being that they are in safe hands.
Key mindset shift: the client owns the facts, you own the framework. Your job in the first ten minutes is to extract their story, not to impress them with section numbers.
A reliable structure: WASP and the funnel
Under pressure, structure is what saves you. A simple, well-worn framework keeps you moving even when nerves bite. Many tutors use WASP: Welcome, Acquire information, Supply advice and a way forward, and Part. Map your 25 minutes loosely onto those stages and you will never freeze.
- Welcome. Greet the client, introduce yourself, confirm their name, and set out how long you have and what you hope to cover. A short signpost — "I'll ask some questions first, then we'll talk about options" — calms both of you.
- Acquire. This is the heart of it. Start with broad, open questions and let the client speak. Then narrow down.
- Supply. Summarise their objectives, outline the realistic options, and flag what you still need to check before giving firm advice.
- Part. Agree clear next steps, confirm who does what and by when, and thank them.
Within the "Acquire" stage, picture a funnel. Open questions at the top ("Tell me what's been happening with the building work"), then probing questions in the middle ("When exactly did he stop turning up?"), then closed questions at the bottom to nail specifics ("So the deposit was £6,000, paid by bank transfer on 3 March — is that right?"). The funnel stops you firing closed questions too early and accidentally leading the client.
Listening, silence and the questions that score marks
Here is something the assessment quietly rewards: silence. When the client finishes a sentence, resist the urge to leap in. A two-second pause often produces the most valuable fact of the whole interview, because people fill silence. Anxious candidates interrupt, and interruption loses marks twice — once for poor listening, once because you missed the information.
Practise active listening signals you can actually demonstrate: brief verbal acknowledgements, reflecting back ("So you felt let down when he ignored your calls"), and periodic summarising ("Let me check I've understood the timeline so far"). Summarising is gold. It shows you are following, it lets the client correct you, and it buys you thinking time while your mind organises the legal issues.
Watch your language too. Avoid jargon. If you must mention a legal concept, translate it. Saying "this may amount to a repudiatory breach" means nothing to a client; "his walking off the job may be a serious enough breach that you could end the contract" lands properly. The assessor wants to see you communicating, not reciting.
A quick test before you give any advice: have you actually confirmed what the client wants? Money back? The work finished? An apology? Solutions that ignore the objective score badly, however legally elegant.
Knowing the law without lecturing the client
You do not park your SQE1 knowledge at the door. The legal content of the interview is marked, so the law you mastered for FLK1 and FLK2 still matters — it just has to surface naturally. In our builder scenario you would be quietly running through contract formation, breach and remedies, perhaps consumer protection if the client is a private individual, and the practical question of whether the builder is even worth suing.
You will not always know the precise statutory provision in the room, and that is fine. What you must do is identify the right area, give measured preliminary advice, and be honest about what you need to verify. A line like "I want to check the exact position on the deposit before I advise you definitively, and I'll do that today" is far stronger than confidently inventing the law. Solicitors who guess get clients into trouble; assessors know this.
Across the five SQE2 skills — Client Interviewing, Advocacy, Case and Matter Analysis, Legal Research and Legal Writing or Drafting — the substantive areas are drawn from a defined set including contract, tort, property, wills, business and criminal matters. Keep your core legal frameworks warm so that when a fact pattern lands, the relevant issues fire automatically while you concentrate on the human in front of you.
The attendance note: turning the interview into marks
Once the client leaves, the second half begins, and tired candidates often throw away easy marks here. The attendance note is a professional record, so write it as one. A clear, usable structure works every time:
- Heading details: client name, date, fee-earner, matter.
- The client's instructions and objectives, set out factually.
- The key facts you gathered, ideally in chronological order.
- The legal analysis and the advice you gave, in plain terms.
- Agreed next steps, with who is responsible and any deadlines.
Write in clean, short sentences. The note must make sense to a colleague who never met the client, and it should reflect what was actually discussed — do not record advice you never gave. If you promised to check the deposit position, the note should say so. Consistency between the spoken interview and the written record is itself a marker of competence.
How to practise so the method sticks
Reading about interviewing is like reading about swimming. You have to get in the water. Rope in a friend, hand them a one-paragraph scenario you have not seen, set a timer for 25 minutes, and run the whole thing — WASP, funnel, summary, advice, next steps. Record it. Watching yourself back is uncomfortable and enormously useful; you will spot every interruption and every burst of jargon.
Then draft the attendance note against the clock as well, because timing in the written half catches people out. Build the habit of summarising aloud, because the same summarising muscle powers your written record. Do this five or six times with varied facts and the structure becomes automatic, freeing your mind to actually listen on the day.
Three things to fix before your next mock: stop interrupting, confirm the client's objective out loud, and finish with concrete next steps. Nail those and your scores climb fast.
If you would like structured practice with feedback, our SQE2 Course at CELE SQE (celebar.com) is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built one-to-one to the official SRA format, so you can rehearse the interview and the attendance note exactly as they appear on the day. We have supported candidates since the very first SQE sitting, and you are welcome to reach us on WeChat SQE100 or at [email protected] with any questions about your preparation — no pressure either way.