Could request super regulator investigation
The Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) has slammed the £250 offered by assessment provider Kaplan to SQE students affected by last week’s major marking blunder, arguing that it doesn’t even “begin to repair the damage that has been caused”.
In a statement on LinkedIn, the representative body said, “an error of this magnitude is simply not acceptable,” and that it would be seeking an urgent meeting with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to discuss how it proposes to rectify this “latest issue.”
Last week, it emerged that a calculation error had led to 175 students being incorrectly informed that they had failed either Functioning Legal Knowledge 1 and/or Functioning Legal Knowledge 2 (the two parts of SQE1), when in reality they had passed.
The JLD, which represents SQE students, trainee solicitors, and junior lawyers across England and Wales, said that it had already reached out to several affected students and urged anyone else impacted by the mistake to contact them directly.
“We reserve the right to call for the Legal Services Board to investigate the matter,” it added.
Legal Cheek revealed last week that students who had their training contract offers rescinded were among those hit by the marking error.