You open the task. There is a client email, a signed contract with a clause someone has scribbled on, two invoices, a chain of texts between the client and the other side's director, and a letter from solicitors threatening proceedings. The clock is running. And your first instinct — I see this in almost every mock I mark — is to start writing everything you know about breach of contract.
That instinct is what loses marks in Case and Matter Analysis. The assessors are not asking what you know. They are asking what you would do for this client, on these facts, by when, and at what risk. It is the closest thing SQE2 has to a real Monday morning in practice.
What Case and Matter Analysis in SQE2 Actually Tests
Case and Matter Analysis is one of the five skills assessed in SQE2, alongside Client Interviewing, Advocacy, Legal Research and Legal Writing/Drafting. It appears across the practice contexts set out in the SRA specification — dispute resolution, business organisations, property practice, wills and estates, criminal litigation — so you cannot revise for it as though it were a single subject.
Two things are being marked at once. There is the skill itself: can you identify the relevant facts, spot what is missing, weigh options and advise? And there is the application of law: is your advice actually correct for England and Wales? A beautifully structured answer built on a misremembered limitation period will not save you. Nor will a legally faultless essay that never tells the client what to do next.
A useful test before you submit: if a supervising partner read your answer, could they act on it without asking you a single follow-up question? If not, something is missing — usually the recommendation, the cost or the deadline.
Reading the bundle: chronology first, law second
Before you type a word of advice, build a chronology. Dates, parties, documents, amounts. Two minutes of dating the events will tell you more than ten minutes of re-reading the client's emotional email.
Why dates matter so much: they drive limitation. Under the Limitation Act 1980, a claim in simple contract runs six years from breach (s.5) and most tort claims six years from damage (s.2), with personal injury reduced to three years from the date of knowledge (s.11). A bundle where the defective goods were delivered in March 2020 and the client only complains now is not a case about breach — it is a case about whether there is anything left to claim at all. Candidates who miss that lose the single most important point in the task.
Then ask what the documents do not say. Is the contract signed by both parties? Does the invoice match the quoted price? Is the "agreement" in the text messages capable of varying a written contract with an entire agreement clause? Missing information is not a failure of the task design — it is part of the assessment. Say plainly what you need, from whom, and why it changes the advice.
Find the Client's Real Objective, Not the Legal One
Clients rarely want "damages". They want to be paid before the end of the quarter, or to keep supplying the same customer, or to stop their business partner draining the company account, or to bury a parent without a family argument. The legal remedy is a tool for that objective.
Watch for the sentence buried in the middle of the client's email: "We do still want to work with them if we can sort this out." That single line should reshape your entire answer. It pushes you towards a without prejudice approach, a payment plan, mediation — and away from an immediate claim form that ends the commercial relationship permanently.
In a company scenario, the same principle applies. A minority shareholder frozen out of decisions may have a petition under s.994 Companies Act 2006 for unfair prejudice, with the usual remedy being a share purchase order. But if what they actually want is to exit with cash within three months, a negotiated buy-out is faster and cheaper than a petition that can take a year and swallow the value of the shares in costs. Say so.
Building options: at least two, properly compared
An answer with one option is not analysis. Set out realistic alternatives and compare them on the things a client can understand: likely outcome, cost, time, evidence needed, and risk.
Typical option sets in a dispute matter might include a letter before claim under the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct; a Part 36 offer, with its costs consequences if the offer is not beaten at trial; mediation; or issuing and then applying for summary judgment under CPR Part 24 where the other side has no real prospect of successfully defending and there is no other compelling reason for a trial. Where the debt is undisputed and the sums are modest, the small claims track and its restricted costs recovery may change the commercial logic entirely.
In a property matter, the options may be renegotiating the price after an adverse search result, requiring the seller to remedy a breach of covenant before completion, or indemnity insurance. In an estates matter, they may be a deed of variation within two years of death, a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, or simply distributing according to the intestacy rules and explaining to a disappointed relative why they receive nothing.
Writing Risk So the Client Can Act on It
Risk is where most candidates go vague. "There is a risk the claim may not succeed" tells a client nothing. Compare that with: "The strongest point against us is that the alleged variation is oral and clause 14 requires variations to be in writing and signed. If the court accepts that clause, the £18,000 uplift is unrecoverable and we would be left with the original contract price."
Concrete risk has four ingredients: the weakness, the evidence that creates it, the consequence in pounds or outcomes, and what can be done to reduce it. Do all four and your answer reads like a solicitor's file note rather than a revision summary.
Do not step over professional conduct issues either. If the bundle contains a conflict between two clients, a client who wants you to write something you know to be untrue, or money arriving from an unexpected third party, that must appear in your advice. Ethical points are threaded through SQE2 deliberately, and they are easy marks for anyone paying attention.
Give every recommendation a next step and an owner. "I recommend we send a letter before claim this week, allowing 14 days for a response. I will need the delivery notes from you by Thursday to finalise the schedule of loss."
Doing this on the Pearson VUE closed platform
SQE2 is delivered on a closed computer-based platform. No browser, no internet, no Boolean searching — Ctrl+F is your only search tool. That has real consequences for Case and Matter Analysis.
You will be moving between documents on screen and your answer window, which is slower and more tiring than working with paper. So practise on screen. Practise scrolling a fifteen-page bundle while typing. Get used to using Ctrl+F for a party name, a date or an amount rather than reading everything twice. And practise typing at speed under pressure — a candidate who types 30 words a minute is competing on unequal terms with one who types 60, regardless of legal knowledge.
One more practical point: allocate your time before you start, and hold the line. A rough split of one quarter reading and planning, half writing, and the remainder checking and finishing works for most people. Running out of time before the recommendation section is the most common self-inflicted wound in this assessment.
A Six-Week Practice Routine for SQE2 Candidates
Knowledge revision for SQE2 is thinner than for SQE1 — the law is broadly the SQE1 material applied in practice — so the training has to be behavioural. Try this rhythm.
Twice a week, complete one full Case and Matter Analysis task to time, on a computer, with no notes. Once a week, take a task you have already done and rewrite only the advice section, forcing yourself to be shorter and more decisive. And every week, mark someone else's answer if you can — spotting a missing limitation point in another candidate's work is the fastest way to stop missing your own.
Keep a one-page "issue radar" that you review before every practice session: limitation, capacity to sue and be sued, enforceability of the clause, evidence available, funding and costs, conduct issues, client objective. Seven prompts. Run them across every bundle you see and your hit rate on the hidden issues will climb quickly.
How CELE SQE can help
If you would like structured practice rather than guesswork, the CELE SQE course for SQE2 is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built 1:1 to the official SRA format, covering Case and Matter Analysis across every assessed practice context. Candidates still working towards SQE1 can look at our long-term (£3,720), mid-term (£2,750) or short-term (£1,750) courses, with single FLK options at half those prices and £150 off for early bookings or bookings within three months of the exam. Questions are welcome any time — WeChat SQE100, [email protected], or celebar.com.