‘Has anyone tried to negotiate a bigger SQE maintenance grant?’

More chance of me trading in my Lambo for a Kia

While there’s no guarantee, it’s definitely worth bringing this up with the graduate recruitment team. I’m a future trainee who recently approached grad rec (at a US firm), where I presented evidence supporting an increase in the maintenance fund. They were more receptive than I expected, and although the final decision was theirs, the maintenance grant has now been significantly increased to £20,000 (up from £17,000 when I signed my contract).

Yes. I asked for a maintenance grant increase and they immediately promoted me to Partner instead. 100% recommend.

Yes! My trainee cohort wrote a letter and managed to get an increase from 12k to 18k

How did you support yourself in uni

I’m going to go against the grain of the comments suggesting part-time work. I have just finished my SQE LLM ahead of my training contract starting next month. The course is brutal and much more of a marathon than a sprint. I was working part-time at the beginning and realised very quickly that this wouldn’t be sustainable. Bearing in mind, I worked throughout my undergraduate degree and sometimes worked multiple jobs at anti-social hours. SQE 1 and 2 in particular require so much of your energy. I treated it like a full-time job in terms of study hours and used Toggl to time record.

I would seriously recommend considering taking the SFE Masters’ Loan (£12,000ish) and saving what you can ahead of the course. I also “paid” myself monthly out of my savings to ensure that I was budgeting appropriately. Some trainees at my firm were also able to study online or from a different campus. I wish you all the best – money concerns on top of this course would be difficult to deal with.