Picture this. You sit down at the Pearson VUE terminal, the legal writing task loads, and you are given a short brief: a client has emailed about a dispute with a supplier, and you must write a letter advising them. You have plenty of law in your head. But your hand hovers, because you suddenly realise the examiner is not testing whether you know the law — they are testing whether you can use it on the page, for a real reader, under time pressure. That gap between knowing and writing is where many SQE2 candidates lose easy marks.
Legal Writing and Drafting are two of the five assessed SQE2 skills, sitting alongside Client Interviewing, Advocacy, Case and Matter Analysis, and Legal Research. They look deceptively simple. After SQE1, with its 360 single best answer questions across FLK1 and FLK2, writing a letter feels almost gentle. It is not. Let me explain what the assessors actually reward, and how to train for it.
Writing versus drafting: two different SQE2 tasks
First, get the vocabulary straight, because the SRA uses these terms in distinct ways and candidates blur them.
Legal writing usually means producing something in continuous prose — typically a letter or an email to a client, or sometimes to a third party. The reader is often a non-lawyer. You are explaining, advising, and recommending. The marker wants clarity, correct law, a sensible recommendation, and an appropriate tone for the recipient.
Legal drafting means producing or amending a formal legal document: a clause in a contract, a witness statement, a deed, a notice, a set of particulars. Here precision and structure carry more weight than warmth. A misplaced word in a clause can change a client's liability, so accuracy is everything.
Quick test before you write a single line: who is reading this, and what do they need to be able to do after they have read it? If you can answer that in one sentence, your structure will almost write itself.
Both tasks are marked on two axes: the legal content (did you get the law right and apply it to the facts?) and the skill itself (is the document well organised, correctly addressed, and pitched at the right reader?). You can score on one axis and lose on the other, so you need to satisfy both deliberately.
What the SQE2 assessors are really looking for
The assessment criteria reward four habits, and once you see them you can train each one.
Identify the legal issue correctly. If the supplier dispute turns on whether a term was incorporated and whether it was breached, say so plainly. The substantive law across SQE2 is drawn from the same areas as SQE1, so your contract, tort and business knowledge has to be live. A candidate who cites the wrong principle writes beautifully and still fails the content mark.
Apply law to the specific facts. Generic law dumps are the single biggest waste of time. The marker is not impressed that you can recite the elements of negligence from Donoghue v Stevenson; they want you to apply duty, breach and causation to this client's slip on this wet floor. Every sentence of law should be followed by a sentence of application.
Give a clear, commercial recommendation. Clients do not want a lecture; they want to know what to do next and what it might cost them. A good advice letter ends with an actionable step: accept the offer, request further evidence, send a letter before claim. Sitting on the fence loses marks.
Use the right register. A letter to a frightened individual client reads differently from a letter to a commercial party's solicitor. No Latin, no unexplained jargon to a lay client. For drafting, a clause must be unambiguous and internally consistent. Tone is assessed, so adjust it consciously.
A reliable structure for the legal writing letter
Under exam pressure on the closed Pearson VUE platform — no internet, no browser, only Ctrl+F within the provided materials — you do not want to be inventing a structure from scratch. Use a template you have rehearsed so often it is automatic.
- Opening: a brief line stating why you are writing and confirming your instructions. One sentence is enough.
- The situation: a short, neutral summary of the facts as you understand them, so the client knows you have grasped the matter.
- The law and how it applies: the heart of the letter. Explain the relevant principle in plain words, then apply it to the client's facts. Use short paragraphs, one issue per paragraph.
- Options and risks: set out the realistic choices and the practical consequences, including time and cost where relevant.
- Recommendation and next steps: tell the client what you advise and what will happen next.
- Close: a polite sign-off inviting questions.
Notice there is no headed "Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion" on the page. IRAC is a thinking tool, not a layout. A client letter that literally shouts "RULE" looks robotic and loses the skill mark. Keep the analysis underneath the prose, not on top of it.
Drafting clauses and documents without overcomplicating
Drafting tasks reward economy. When you amend or add a clause, follow three rules. Keep one obligation per sentence. Define a term once, then use it consistently — if you start with "the Goods", never drift to "the products" halfway through. And make sure your clause does only what the instructions ask; do not bolt on extra provisions the client never requested, because that often introduces error.
For a witness statement, remember the formalities: numbered paragraphs, chronological order, the statement of truth, first person, and only the facts the witness can actually speak to. For a notice — say under a lease or a contractual termination clause — the precise wording and the deadline matter enormously, so lift the operative requirements straight from the instrument and follow them to the letter.
A drafting habit worth building: read your finished clause aloud in your head as if you were the opposing solicitor trying to wriggle out of it. If you can find an ambiguity, so can they. Close the gap before you submit.
Timing, proofreading and the closed Pearson VUE platform
You write these assessments on a locked-down computer. There is no spell-check you can lean on, no Google, and only Ctrl+F to navigate the source documents. That changes how you should prepare.
Budget your minutes. Spend the first portion reading the materials and planning a quick skeleton — issues in order, recommendation in mind. Then write steadily. Reserve the final few minutes purely to proofread. Typos and grammatical slips read as carelessness, and in a profession built on precision, that costs you. Because there is no automatic correction, you must train your own eye.
Practise typing complete answers under timed conditions, not handwriting them and certainly not just planning them in your head. The physical act of producing 400 to 600 clean words to a deadline is itself a skill. Many capable lawyers underperform here simply because they never rehearsed the format. Treat the keyboard, the clock and the plain-text environment as part of what you are training for.
A four-week training routine that actually works
Knowledge revision and skills practice are different muscles, so block separate time for each. Here is a routine I recommend to candidates in the weeks before SQE2.
- Write one full advice letter every two days, each from a different practice area, and time yourself strictly.
- Draft one clause or one short document on the alternate days — a clause, a notice, a witness statement section.
- After each attempt, mark yourself against the two axes: did I get the law right, and did I write it well for the reader?
- Keep a personal error log. If you keep drifting into law dumps or forgetting the recommendation, name the habit and hunt it next time.
- Once a week, write to a non-lawyer reader and ask them whether they understood your advice. If they did not, neither would the client.
Do this and the exam stops feeling like a test of memory and starts feeling like a Tuesday at work, which is exactly the point. The SRA is asking: can this person do the job of a junior solicitor on day one? Your writing should answer yes.
How CELE SQE can help
If you would like structured practice rather than guessing in the dark, the CELE SQE (celebar.com) SQE2 Course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built 1:1 to the official SRA format, so you rehearse legal writing and drafting under the real conditions you will meet on the day. Many candidates pair it with their SQE1 preparation — our SQE1 courses run from £1,750 for the short-term option up to £3,720 for the long-term course, with single FLK options at half price. Reach us any time on WeChat SQE100 or at [email protected] if you want to talk through the right fit for your timeline. No pressure — just ask.