Aspiring lawyers take note
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has confirmed that provisions of the Sentencing Act 2026, which came into force last month, will not be examinable in the upcoming April 2026 SQE2 assessment window.
The regulator’s cut-off date for examinable law in the April sitting is 28 December 2025, and as the Act came into force on 22 March 2026, its provisions are simply out of scope. The SRA says the clarification is intended to help candidates with their preparation.
SQE2 is the second of two centralised assessments that aspiring solicitors in England and Wales must pass to qualify. While SQE1 tests functioning legal knowledge through multiple choice questions, SQE2 assesses practical legal skills across a range of written and oral tasks, including client interviews, advocacy and legal drafting.
The Sentencing Act 2026 makes several notable changes to criminal law that would ordinarily fall squarely within the functioning legal knowledge candidates are expected to demonstrate in SQE2. Courts will now be required to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months or less, while the existing 14 and 28-day fixed term recall periods are replaced with a standard 56-day recall for most determinate sentence prisoners. The Act also tweaks sentencing structure more broadly, introducing “restriction zones” and driving prohibitions as new licence conditions.
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