Rosie Eccleston talks SQE preparation, life at ULaw Leeds and the transition from study into practice
Having completed the SQE LLM at The University of Law’s (ULaw) Leeds campus, where she was also a student ambassador, Rosie Eccleston is now a first-year trainee solicitor at Squire Patton Boggs’ Leeds office. Speaking to Legal Cheek Careers, she reflects on everything from workshop-led teaching and revision resources to tutor support and the student community, as well as how the course has translated into her day-to-day work.
Rosie found the SQE noticeably more vocational than her undergraduate studies, a shift that suited the way she likes to learn. “I wanted to learn how to actually apply [the law] in practice,” she explains. Having always preferred problem questions to more theoretical essays, she enjoyed working through real-life scenarios and discussing them in workshops rather than sitting through traditional lectures. She also appreciated the “professional element” of learning from tutors who had worked, or were still working, in private practice, bringing first-hand experience into the classroom.
Rosie’s interest in law began at A-level before she went on to do a law degree. Mooting and negotiation exercises helped her decide that the solicitor route suited her better, particularly the prospect of direct client contact. She later built up experience as a legal secretary and through several vacation schemes, which gave her exposure to different firms and practice areas. “I think people forget that it does go both ways when you’re submitting applications,” she says. “You can kind of see if the firm is the right fit for you as well.”
A typical week followed ULaw’s ‘Prepare, Engage, Consolidate’ model, with Rosie attending “four to six workshops a week”, usually lasting between 90 minutes and two hours. Before each session, students would prepare through “textbook reading, article reading, maybe some practice questions and practice scenarios”, before using the workshops to “discuss scenarios with people on your table and with your lecturer”. Follow-up questions and further reading then formed the consolidate stage. “It’s quite nice that you follow that model for each of your workshops,” she says.
The course also requires a fair degree of independent study. “You make the most of the workshops by doing the reading and the preparatory questions so that you can ask any questions you’ve got,” Rosie explains. “It definitely is independent in terms of holding yourself accountable, but the structure is there to lean into the more practical workshops.”
With the SQE covering such a large volume of material, Rosie found ULaw’s weekly practice tests particularly useful for keeping track of her progress. Covering both the modules studied that week and underlying legal subjects from her undergraduate degree, the tests “showed you where your gaps were”, she explains. She also made use of ULaw’s wider question bank and physical textbooks from the Leeds library, alongside mocks and sample questions from a range of sources. “Getting used to being thrown off by questions was really good for me,” she says, explaining that exposure to different writing styles and ways of wording questions helped prepare her for the assessments.
Tutor access was another strength of Rosie’s experience at ULaw Leeds. She describes the workshops as “quite chatty”, with plenty of discussion around the table, and says tutors were “always happy to answer questions”. “I never felt like I couldn’t ask questions,” she adds, noting that tutors were responsive over email and would follow up if something fell outside their own area of expertise. Students were also assigned a dedicated academic tutor, giving them another point of contact alongside their workshop tutors.
SQE2 brought a different set of challenges. “I do think people underestimate SQE2,” Rosie says, pointing to the three days of written assessments and two days of oral exams. One reassurance was that “it’s all the same legal content as SQE1”, with the emphasis instead shifting towards practical skills. ULaw’s mocks and skills teaching helped her prepare for that change. Advocacy, for example, was entirely new to her and was taught by a practising barrister. “She was fantastic,” Rosie says. “She showed us how a real judge would respond to our arguments, which was eye-opening.”
Having sat the SQE exams herself, Rosie later became a student ambassador at ULaw Leeds, attending open days, online talks and Legal Cheek sessions to speak with prospective students about her experience. She says there is “a lot of correct information out there” about the SQE, but also “a lot of myths and a lot of scaremongering”, which she says adds to the sense of intimidation around the qualification. Being able to offer a first-hand perspective was something she particularly enjoyed. “It’s nice that someone can walk up to you at an open day and ask, ‘How did you actually find it? What do you think?’” she says. Questions about managing the workload, what a typical week looked like and training contract applications were among those that came up most often.
Rosie studied on the smaller March-to-March intake, which she says gave her a slightly different experience from those joining in September. “Some of my closest friends now are people I met at ULaw,” she says. With the Leeds campus spread across two main buildings, “you see the same people around campus”, including future trainees, solicitor apprentices and paralegals. What stood out to her was that “everyone was there with a focus on law”, with students working towards similar goals despite taking different routes into the profession. “ULaw provides that space for like-minded people to come together and create a community,” she explains.
The crossover between the SQE and Rosie’s first trainee seat has been particularly clear in real estate. “My first seat is in real estate, and you study property practice on the SQE, so it was quite a nice transition,” she says. “I have used things I learned on the SQE in my daily work, which has been quite full circle.” She also points to the wider habits the course helped develop. “When I was studying, I liked to look into the ‘why’,” she explains, adding that this mirrors the way solicitors think about “what the client wants, and what they need”. The independent nature of the SQE also helped prepare her for managing a busy and sometimes unpredictable workload as a trainee.
Asked what she would tell future SQE students, Rosie recommends sticking with the study habits that have worked for them before. “Reflect on your previous academic journey and what has worked for you in the past,” she says. For her, that meant plenty of practice questions and attending workshops in person. Above all, she encourages students to keep the challenge in perspective: “Acknowledge that it is tough, manage your expectations of how hard you need to work, and give yourself credit.” Her final advice? “Go into it with positivity.”
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