A candidate emailed us last spring, two weeks after her SQE2 sitting. She had spent months on substantive law — she could recite the elements of unfair prejudice petitions and the priority rules for registered land — and she still felt she had underperformed in the writing station. "I knew the law," she wrote. "I just don't think I sounded like a solicitor." That instinct was right, and it is the single most useful diagnosis a candidate can make about this part of the assessment.
Legal Writing and Legal Drafting sit inside SQE2 alongside Client Interviewing, Advocacy, Case and Matter Analysis and Legal Research. They are assessed across the SQE2 practice contexts — business organisations rules and procedures, dispute resolution, property practice, wills and intestacy, probate administration and practice, and criminal litigation. And unlike SQE1, where each of the two papers throws 180 single best answer questions at you over 5 hours 20 minutes, here nobody hands you five options. You produce the document. Blank screen, clock running.
What SQE2 assessors actually reward in legal writing and drafting
Every SQE2 task is marked against two things: your skills and your application of law. Read that again, because it changes how you allocate effort. A beautifully written letter that states the law inaccurately loses marks. So does a legally impeccable answer buried in dense, unsigposted prose that no client could follow.
Skills, in this context, means practical competence: identifying what the client actually needs, using the correct register for the recipient, structuring the document logically, being clear and concise, keeping to the instructions given, and behaving ethically. Application of law means the advice is correct, relevant, and responsive to the facts in the papers — not a generic essay on the topic.
The mental shift: you are not writing an answer to a question. You are producing a document that a supervising partner would be content to send out with the firm's name at the top.
Legal writing and legal drafting are not the same skill
Candidates conflate them constantly, and it costs marks. Legal writing usually means communicating advice — a letter or email to a client, sometimes to another solicitor, occasionally an attendance note or internal memorandum. The audience is often a lay person. The job is to explain, advise and tell them what happens next.
Legal drafting means producing part of a legal document: a clause, a witness statement, a particulars of claim, a section of a partnership agreement, a letter before claim under the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. Here the audience is the court, the other side's lawyer, or a future reader trying to work out what the parties agreed three years ago. Precision beats warmth. Ambiguity is the enemy.
Ask yourself before you type a word: who reads this, and what do they need to be able to do after reading it? A client needs to make a decision. A judge needs to identify the issue. A counterparty's solicitor needs to know what you are asserting and by when.
Register: the fastest way to lose easy marks
Writing to a client who runs a small courier business? Then "the doctrine of frustration may operate to discharge the parties' primary obligations" is the wrong sentence. "Because the warehouse burnt down, the contract may have come to an end automatically — neither side would then have to perform" is the right one. Explain the concept in ordinary words, then, if useful, name it once.
The reverse trap also exists. Writing to another solicitor, you do not need to define what a Part 36 offer is. Over-explaining to a professional reader reads as padding and eats your clock.
A structure you can run on autopilot in SQE2
Under time pressure, structure is oxygen. Build a skeleton you can deploy without thinking so your thinking goes into the law. For a client-facing letter or email:
- Opening and purpose. Thank them, reference the meeting or instructions, state in one line what the letter covers.
- The facts as you understand them. Short. It shows you have read the papers and gives the client a chance to correct you.
- The advice, broken into headed sections. One issue per heading. Law explained in plain terms, applied to their facts, with a conclusion the client can act on.
- Risks, costs and alternatives. Litigation risk, the possibility of an adverse costs order, whether mediation might be cheaper. Real solicitors flag this; candidates forget it.
- Next steps and a deadline. Who does what, by when. "Please confirm by 5pm on Friday whether you wish us to send the letter before claim."
- Sign-off. Professional, brief, with an invitation to call.
Headings are not decoration. They demonstrate organisation to the assessor within two seconds of the page appearing. Use them.
Getting the law in without turning it into an essay
You should cite authority where a practising solicitor genuinely would. In a letter of advice on a claim for defective goods, referencing the implied terms in the Sale of Goods Act 1979 or the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is natural. Warning a client that a simple contract claim is generally time-barred six years from breach under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980 is exactly the kind of point that wins marks. Explaining that a contract for the sale of land must be in writing, incorporating all agreed terms and signed by both parties, per section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, is essential — not optional.
Cases are used more sparingly in correspondence. If a principle is famous enough that naming it adds clarity — Donoghue v Stevenson for the neighbour principle, Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd for separate legal personality — a single mention is fine. Do not string together five case names to prove you revised. And never invent a section number. If you cannot recall the precise provision, write "under the Partnership Act 1890" rather than guessing at a section and getting it wrong.
Drafting clauses: precision, defined terms, and what goes wrong
Clause drafting rewards discipline. A workable habit: one obligation per clause, active voice, defined terms capitalised and used consistently, and no word that could carry two meanings. "The Seller shall deliver the Goods to the Premises by 5pm on 1 March 2027" beats "delivery to take place in early March".
Watch for the classic failures. Undefined terms used as though defined. "Reasonable endeavours" dropped in where the client wanted a hard obligation. Payment clauses with no trigger event. Termination clauses that say a party may terminate but never say how notice is given or when it takes effect. A partnership agreement clause on profit shares that says nothing about losses — remember that under the Partnership Act 1890 the default position applies where the agreement is silent, and clients rarely want the default.
Before you submit any drafted clause, read it once pretending you are the party who wants to escape the obligation. Can you? Then rewrite it.
The Pearson VUE platform changes how you write
SQE2 is delivered on a closed Pearson VUE platform. No browser, no internet, no Boolean searching — only Ctrl+F within the materials you are given. That matters for writing and drafting in three practical ways.
You will be typing into a plain interface, so do not rely on the automatic tidying you get in a word processor at home. Your typing speed and accuracy become genuine assessment variables — worth practising. And because you cannot look anything up externally, your recall of core statutory frameworks has to be secure before you walk in. There is no rescue button.
Practise on a keyboard, in a plain text editor, with a timer. Handwritten practice will not prepare your fingers or your eyes for what the screen looks like on the day.
A four-week drill that actually moves your score
Two documents a week, minimum. One writing task, one drafting task, each from a different practice context so you rotate through business, dispute resolution, property, probate and criminal litigation. Time yourself strictly and stop when the clock stops, even mid-sentence — that tells you where your pacing is broken.
Then mark yourself against the two criteria separately. Give one score for skills — structure, clarity, tone, instructions followed, ethics addressed — and a second for application of law. Most candidates discover their scores are lopsided, and the fix is completely different depending on which side is weak. Ethical issues, by the way, appear more often than people expect: a conflict of interest, a client asking you to mislead the other side, a potential money laundering red flag. Flag it in the document; do not ignore it because it feels awkward.
Finally, build a personal bank of reusable sentences — a costs warning, a limitation warning, a next-steps paragraph, a standard sign-off. Not to copy blindly, but so that on the day you are spending your thinking time on the client's problem rather than on how to begin a paragraph.
How CELE SQE can help
If you want structured practice rather than guesswork, our SQE2 course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built 1:1 to the official SRA format, so your writing and drafting practice looks exactly like the real thing. If you are still working towards SQE1 first, the 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 are covered in our long-term (£3,720), mid-term (£2,750) and short-term (£1,750) courses, with single-FLK options at half price and £150 off for early birds. Questions? We are on WeChat SQE100, at [email protected], or at celebar.com — happy to talk through where your writing currently sits.