Kinnu SQE Review

I don’t use the word “survive” lightly. Anyone who has been through the SQE, whether that be SQE1 or SQE2, will understand the sheer level of pressure involved, and the amount of blood, sweat and tears it takes just to walk into that exam hall (not to mention the willpower required not to turn around and walk straight back out).

That probably sounds dramatic to anyone outside of it, but I actually think the pressure of the SQE is difficult to put into words unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Mostly because the first words that come to mind usually aren’t suitable for publication and would need to be replaced with asterisks.

As someone currently deep in SQE prep myself (unfortunately), I’m not interested in shortcuts or gimmicks. But when something genuinely makes the process feel more manageable, more efficient, or slightly less soul-destroying, it catches my attention. So when I came across Kinnu, I was curious enough to reach out and take a proper look at it. In a nutshell, and to preface some of my later points about AI, Kinnu’s approach seems to centre on using AI to genuinely support learning and understanding, rather than pretending to replace it altogether. Which, frankly, is refreshing in a world where some AI tools will confidently invent case law, misstate legal principles, and present the answer as unquestionable fact (no names mentioned, ChatGPT).

I work at a law firm that is genuinely embracing AI usage day-to-day. So I come to this from both sides. I’ve seen what AI can do when it’s used well. I’ve also sat in rooms where experienced lawyers are deeply sceptical, and I’ve felt that scepticism myself. AI already is becoming a huge part of both legal practice and education, but I also think it’s important to be realistic about it. I’m someone who lives with it at work and studies with it at night, and I have a fairly clear-eyed view of where it genuinely helps and where it falls short.

That’s the lens I used on Kinnu. Here’s what I found.

What is Kinnu?

Kinnu is a London-based edtech startup that has been building AI-powered learning tools since before the current AI boom made it fashionable. Founded in 2021, the company has raised close to $9 million in funding from major investors including LocalGlobe, NAP Ventures, Spark Capital and Repeat Ventures.

Originally focused on subjects like psychology, history and science, Kinnu has now brought that same learning platform to SQE prep. At your fingertips are study notes, MCQs, mocks, flashcards and study tips, all connected in one place, available across web and mobile, with offline functionality too.

So, we’ve got an established learning app developer, with genuine AI expertise, now applying that to SQE preparation. The question is, is it actually any good?

Lara AI

Every feature in Kinnu is underpinned by Lara, their SQE-specific AI model. And I want to spend proper time on this because it’s where Kinnu either earns its pitch or doesn’t.

When most prep providers say “AI-powered” what they actually mean is: we’ve put a chatbot on our website. You ask it something, it answers, and it has absolutely no idea what you were just studying, how you’ve been performing, or where you are in your preparation. It’s useful the way Google is useful, but it isn’t personalised, and it isn’t learning anything about you.

Lara is different. When I was working through MCQs, Lara knew exactly which question I was on, what I’d got right, what I’d got wrong, and what I was looking at in that moment. When I asked it to explain a concept, it explained that specific concept in that specific context, not a generic definition scraped from somewhere on the internet. This is what’s called context-aware AI, and the difference in practice is significant. Perhaps not the best analogy, but I would liken it to having a tutor on call throughout your study session.

MCQ bank

The MCQ bank covers the SQE1 curriculum and is where I spent most of my time on the platform. A few things worth highlighting:

Study Notes

One feature I think deserves more credit is the study notes themselves, not least because they’re actually useful. They’re concise without feeling watered down, structured around the SQE syllabus, and written in a way that feels designed for revision rather than like someone copied chunks out of a textbook and hoped for the best.

What I liked most was how naturally everything linked together. The notes, MCQs and flashcards all connect to each other, so if I realised I was shaky on a topic, I could move between them pretty easily instead of spending half my revision session jumping between different platforms and tabs trying to piece everything together myself (which, take it from me, is nothing short of chaos).

Flashcards

Kinnu’s flashcard system uses spaced repetition: cards you find harder or haven’t seen recently come up more frequently, while well-known cards are spaced out over longer intervals. The algorithm is specifically calibrated for exam day performance rather than long-term memory formation, so you peak when it counts rather than three weeks later.

You can mark each card as Hard, Medium or Easy, build custom stacks, and create your own cards directly from the study notes. Lara is available here too.

Mock Exams

The mock exams are another feature worth mentioning properly. SQE prep is one thing when you’re answering a few MCQs at your desk, in what I would call a low-pressure environment; it’s another when you’re trying to sustain focus and accuracy in a high-pressure environment, i.e. reflecting real exam conditions.

Kinnu’s mocks let you simulate that pressure more realistically, while still giving you the same detailed answer reasoning and performance breakdown afterwards. That combination is useful because the value is not just in seeing your score. It’s in understanding the patterns behind it and spotting where your understanding starts to fall apart under pressure (which, dramatic wording aside, is genuinely what SQE exams can feel like at times).

Stats and performance tracking

The platform tracks everything automatically: questions attempted, accuracy by topic, time spent, weaker areas highlighted. I’m someone who manually keeps a mistake log and tracks MCQ scores in a spreadsheet. Kinnu does all of that in the background without you having to think about it (which is helpful when you have a million other things to be thinking about).

Prep Score and the 94% claim

Here’s something I can share that hasn’t been published anywhere else yet. Kinnu’s proprietary Prep Score metric, which predicts whether you’ll pass or fail your SQE sitting based on your performance on the platform, is reporting 94% accuracy.

Prep Score goes beyond a simple percentage correct. It factors in three things:

• Your performance across practice questions
• The difficulty of the questions you've been answering
• How your performance compares to other candidates sitting the same exam

So instead of “you got 68% right in Criminal Law,” you get a genuine signal of how prepared you actually are relative to the standard required to pass.

That’s a meaningful shift if you think about what it replaces. Most candidates spend months with no real sense of whether they’re ready; the countless Reddit threads I’ve come across can attest for how common of a question this is among candidates.

The elephant in the room: the risks of AI in exam prep

I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t address this honestly.

As I mentioned, I work somewhere that sees real benefits from AI every day, but I am also exposed to the scepticism. That scepticism is not irrational. It’s appropriate, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. A fantasy, most likely.

The core problem with AI study tools is hallucination. AI systems can produce incorrect information stated with complete confidence, and in an exam prep context that’s particularly dangerous. You’re not reading for interest. You’re building a mental model of the law that you’ll apply under real exam conditions. An inaccuracy that feels authoritative can embed itself in your understanding and cost you marks months later.

This is where Kinnu’s pipeline matters. Content is verified three times by three people who have actually passed the SQE before it ever reaches users. We live in an age where generating content is easy; evaluating whether that content is actually accurate is the hard part. That evaluation process is clearly something Kinnu takes seriously, and honestly, it’s one of the main reasons I felt more comfortable using the platform in the first place. Kinnu is also actively working to improve accuracy through real candidate performance data, feeding results back into content refinement as more SQE candidates use the platform. It gets more calibrated the more people go through it.

No tool is perfect and I’d never tell you to rely on any single source for SQE prep. But the question isn’t whether AI carries risk; it’s whether the specific tool you’re using has taken those risks seriously. From what I’ve seen, Kinnu has.

The mobile app

iOS and Android, offline access (except Lara), full feature parity with desktop. Rated highly on both the App Store and Google Play.

Pricing

Who is Kinnu best for?

Kinnu suits you if:

• You're studying alongside work and need something that fits into short, irregular sessions
• You find passive reading and video watching difficult to sustain. The interactive format keeps you more engaged.
• You want to understand the full reasoning behind every answer, not just whether you got it right
• You know you should be tracking your performance properly but never quite manage it. Kinnu does it automatically.
• You want a platform that gives you an honest, data-backed read on whether you're actually ready

It’s probably not the right primary tool if you need live tutor support or structured classroom-style teaching. But as a preparation layer that keeps you active, accountable, and informed on your readiness, it does that very well.

Kinnu SQE: FAQs