A candidate messaged us last autumn, two days after her SQE2. She said the interviewing went fine, advocacy was survivable, and then she got to Legal Research and froze for eleven minutes. Not because she did not know the law. Because she typed a phrase into the search box the way she would type it into a normal legal database — and nothing sensible came back. Eleven minutes of a sixty-minute task, gone.
That is the honest problem with the SQE2 Legal Research task. It is not really a memory test. It is a test of whether you can behave sensibly inside a locked-down piece of software while a clock runs. Let us take it apart properly.
What the SQE2 Legal Research task actually asks of you
You get a short factual scenario, usually a supervising partner or a client raising a question that has a findable answer in the materials provided. Your job is to research it and produce a written note of advice — most candidates think of it as a memo — within 60 minutes. Per the latest SRA specification, the task is assessed on both your legal skills and your application of the law, so a beautifully written memo with the wrong answer will not save you, and neither will the right answer scrawled without reasoning or citation.
Two things follow from that. You need to reach a definite conclusion, not a survey of possibilities. And you need to show the reader where your conclusion comes from, in terms they could check themselves.
The examiner is not asking "do you know this area of law?" The question is closer to: "if we sent you to the library for an hour, would we be able to rely on what you brought back?"
The Pearson VUE reality: Ctrl+F only, no Boolean, no internet
SQE2 is delivered on the Pearson VUE closed platform. There is no browser. No internet. No connectors, no wildcards, no proximity operators, no natural-language search that guesses at what you meant. What you have is Ctrl+F — a plain find-on-page function that looks for a literal string of characters inside the document you currently have open.
Read that last sentence again, because it contains the whole strategy. Ctrl+F does not search the library. It searches the page. So your first decision in every Legal Research task is not "what shall I search for?" but "which document should I be inside?" Get that wrong and your search terms cannot help you.
The second consequence is that long phrases are dangerous. If you search for "liability of a partner for the firm's debts", the platform is looking for exactly that run of characters. Statutes almost never phrase things the way solicitors speak. Short, statutory, single-word searches win: partner, dissolution, notice, deed, consent, six years.
Search terms that behave well under Ctrl+F
- Use the statutory noun, not the practitioner's paraphrase. "Time limit" may not appear anywhere in the Limitation Act 1980; "action" and "accrued" do.
- Search section numbers directly when you already have a strong idea. Typing s 168 or 168 to reach removal of a director under the Companies Act 2006 is faster than scrolling a long contents list.
- Truncate mentally. Since there are no wildcards, search the stem you are sure about — terminat catches terminate, terminated, termination.
- Beware plurals and hyphens. Trustee and trustees are different strings. So are co-owner and co owner.
- Have a fallback term ready before you press Enter. If guarantee fails, try surety. If landlord fails, try lessor.
A 60-minute timeline you can actually keep to
The candidates who do well are almost always the ones who decided in advance how the hour would be divided. Here is a split we have used with CELE SQE students for several sittings, and it holds up:
Minutes 0–6 — read and reduce. Read the instructions twice. Identify who the memo is for, what precise question is being asked, and what has already been decided for you. Write the legal question in one sentence in your own words. If you cannot do that, you are not ready to search.
Minutes 6–10 — plan the search. Jot down the likely source (statute? which one? which Part?) and three or four candidate search terms in order of confidence. Ten seconds of planning here regularly saves five minutes of aimless scrolling.
Minutes 10–30 — locate and verify. Find the provision. Then read around it. Definitions sections and the "interpretation" provisions at the end of an Act are where careless candidates lose marks, because a term that seems obvious has been given a narrower meaning. Note the exact citation as you go — section, subsection, paragraph.
Minutes 30–52 — write. Not "draft then rewrite". You do not have time. Write the memo once, in order, in complete sentences.
Minutes 52–60 — check. Does the memo answer the actual question? Is every citation there and accurate? Is your advice a conclusion rather than a shrug?
Structuring the memo so the marker finds everything
A workable skeleton, and one you should rehearse until it is automatic:
- Heading block — to, from, date, matter, and the question in one line.
- Short answer — two or three sentences giving your conclusion. Put it first. A supervising partner reading at speed should not have to hunt for it.
- The law — the relevant provisions and authorities, cited properly, explained in plain English.
- Application — the law mapped onto the client's facts, with the facts named. "Because the notice was served on 3 March, and the lease requires six months…"
- Advice and next steps — what should happen now, and any information you would need to firm up the answer.
Notice how much of that you can pre-load. The headings, the tone, the ordering — all of it can be muscle memory before you sit down, which means the hour is spent on the parts that vary.
Citation discipline: what "properly cited" looks like
Give the Act, the year, and the specific provision: the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, s 2 for contracts for the sale of land, or the Law of Property Act 1925, s 52 for the requirement of a deed to convey a legal estate. For cases, name and, where you have it, the year: Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 for the neighbour principle; Knight v Knight for the three certainties in trusts. For partnerships, Partnership Act 1890, s 24(1) on equal sharing of profits in the absence of contrary agreement, and s 5 on a partner's authority to bind the firm. For limitation, Limitation Act 1980, s 5 for simple contract and s 11 for personal injury claims.
Do not invent a section number because it feels plausible. If you have the provision open in front of you, copy it exactly. If you genuinely cannot find it, cite the Act and the Part, and say what the provision provides — an honest, slightly loose citation beats a confident fabrication every time.
The four mistakes we see most often
Answering a bigger question than the one asked. If the partner asks whether the client can terminate, do not write an essay on the whole contract. Stay narrow.
Reading the provision without reading the exceptions. Many provisions have a "subject to subsection (3)" hiding in plain sight. Always scan the surrounding subsections before you commit.
Refusing to conclude. "It is arguable either way" is not advice. Where genuine doubt exists, say which way you think it falls and why, then flag the risk.
Running out of time because searching felt productive. It rarely is after the twenty-minute mark. Set yourself a hard rule: at minute 30 you start writing with what you have.
How to practise this properly
Do timed runs, and do them with the internet switched off and only a find-on-page function available. Open a PDF of a single statute, give yourself a question, and force yourself to answer it in an hour without Google. Uncomfortable? Yes. That discomfort is the whole point — you are training for the closed platform, not for a comfortable afternoon in a library.
Build a personal list of statutory vocabulary as you revise the FLK1 and FLK2 subjects for SQE1. Every time you meet a term that a statute uses differently from ordinary speech, write it down. That list becomes your search-term arsenal for SQE2, and it costs you nothing extra while you are already studying.
How CELE SQE can help
We have been coaching candidates through this route since the very first sitting in 2021, and Legal Research is one of the skills that improves fastest with structured feedback. Our SQE2 Course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built 1:1 to the official SRA format, so you can rehearse the 60-minute memo under realistic constraints rather than guessing. If you are still working through SQE1 first, the Long-term Course is £3,720, Mid-term £2,750 and Short-term £1,750, with single-FLK options at half those prices and £150 off for early booking. Questions? WeChat SQE100, or email [email protected] — we are happy to talk through where you are before you commit to anything.