SQE2 Oral Skills: How to Actually Prepare for Advocacy and Client Interviewing

Of all six SQE2 assessments, advocacy and client interviewing cause the most panic. I know because I felt it myself.

The idea of standing up and making a legal argument in real time, or conducting a structured interview while simultaneously taking attendance-note-quality notes, feels impossible when you are looking at it from the outside. Especially when most of the preparation advice online is either generic or focused on skills practice that does not connect to the underlying law.

I passed SQE2 in November 2025 without a single 1 or 2. This is the approach I used.

Why skills-only practice does not work

When I was at BPP, the focus was on skills. Practise your open. Practise your roadmap. Practise your close. Do mock after mock.

The problem is that advocacy and interviewing are not really skills assessments in isolation. They are knowledge assessments dressed in skills clothing. If you do not know the Denton test, no amount of delivery practice will save your relief from sanctions advocacy. If you do not know the issues that come up in a residential conveyancing transaction, you will miss the things your client is telling you.

The breakthrough for me was reversing the order. Know the law first. Then practise the delivery.

I also want to say: if you are sitting in a few weeks and feel like you have barely started on the oral assessments, that is more recoverable than you think. The approach below is efficient precisely because it does not rely on hundreds of hours of practice.

Advocacy: the approach that worked

The single most useful thing I did for advocacy was creating a comprehensive list of every application that was likely to come up for Dispute Resolution and Criminal Law and Practice. Belts and braces. Knowing all the tests also served as general FLK revision for the written assessments, so the time was not wasted even if not everything came up.

For Dispute Resolution, I prepared for:

Obtaining default judgment, setting aside default judgment, summary judgment, strike out, relief from sanctions, service by alternative method, dispensing with service, deemed service, extension of time to serve the claim form, service outside the jurisdiction, interim injunction, interim payment, security for costs, amendments before and after the limitation period, adding/substituting/removing a party, further information, disclosure and inspection, specific disclosure, non-party disclosure, Norwich Pharmacal order, witness summons, freezing injunction, search order, interim declaration, interim costs, stay, enforcement, first appeal and second appeal.

For Criminal Law and Practice, I prepared for:

Bail, adult allocation, youth allocation, identity evidence, hearsay, confession evidence, bad character, no case to answer, Newton hearing, plea in mitigation, bad character for a non-defendant, special measures, variation of bail conditions, appeal from the magistrates' court to the Crown Court, appeal by case stated and appeal from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal.

This list is long. That is the point.

How I structured each application

For each application, I made a guide covering three things: purpose, law, and a script for both making and opposing the application.

The purpose section covered what the application is for and why a party would bring it. The law section covered the relevant test, the CPR rule or statute, and the leading cases. The script followed a consistent structure regardless of the application:

Open and roadmap: Introduce yourself and your client, name the application and the relevant rule.

Context: Briefly summarise the factual and procedural background. Offer to expand if the judge has not reviewed the papers.

Law: Set out the legal test. Be explicit. Name the case. Identify the stages if there are stages.

Application: Go through the test stage by stage and apply it to your facts. This is where most marks are won or lost.

Relief sought: Be clear about exactly what you are asking for, including any conditions you are prepared to accept.

Close: Summarise. Invite questions. Close properly.

A worked example: relief from sanctions

Relief from sanctions is a high-probability application that illustrates the approach well.

The law is CPR 3.9 and the Denton v White test. There are three stages: assess whether the breach was serious or significant; consider the reason for the default; evaluate all the circumstances, with particular weight on the need for efficient and proportionate litigation and the enforcement of compliance with rules and orders.

Making the application:

Stage one argues the breach was not serious or significant, or if it was, moves efficiently to stage two. Stage two gives a genuine and particularised reason, far removed from mere oversight or inefficiency. Stage three emphasises that the application was made promptly, that the breach has been remedied, that there is minimal prejudice to the other side, and that denying relief would be disproportionate having regard to the overriding objective.

Opposing the application:

Each stage is flipped. The breach was plainly serious: it endangered the trial date, wasted costs, and undermined case management. The reason is inadequate: oversight and workload pressures are not good reasons under Denton. In the circumstances, granting relief would undermine compliance culture and reward a party that has demonstrated a disregard for court orders.

The key insight: the structure is almost identical regardless of the application. Once it is in your muscle memory, you fill in the substance for whichever application you have prepared. The delivery can be imperfect. The assessors are not expecting a barrister. They are marking whether you know the law and can apply it to facts in a structured way.

On delivery

Say it out loud. Not in your head. Out loud, standing up if possible.

The reason is simple: in the exam room you need to produce arguments under pressure, not recognise them on a page. Your brain needs to practise retrieval and delivery together. A handful of out-loud run-throughs will do more for you than hours of reading your notes.

You do not need to sound like a barrister. Clear, structured, legally accurate. That is what the assessors want to see.

Client interviewing: the approach that worked

Client interviewing is assessed in Property Law and Practice and Wills and Administration of Estates. The format is a role-play with a client actor, followed by a written attendance note.

The mistake most people make is treating it as a pure performance exercise. It is not. The attendance note is marked too, and the note reflects whether you identified the right issues in the interview.

The structure I used:

First, I created a general interview structure for PLP and WAE separately. This covered the overall flow: opening and introductions, purpose of the meeting, gathering client information, identifying the issues, advising on next steps and closing. A template you can apply to any scenario.

Then, for each type of client, I created a slightly different structure with the specific issues likely to arise. For PLP this meant separate structures for buyer, seller, landlord, tenant, lender and undertenant. For each type I listed the probable issues and revised the relevant law using IRAC paragraphs.

The trick that helped most in the exam room itself:

As soon as I sat down, before the client came in, I wrote headings on the scrap paper provided. The headings reflected the structure I had prepared. When I was taking notes during the interview, everything went into the right section automatically. This made the attendance note much faster and more organised to write afterwards because the framework was already there.

Your notes during the interview are visible to the assessors. Organised notes signal a competent solicitor. Disorganised notes do the opposite.

The attendance note

Write it as if your supervising partner is going to read it. It should cover: the client, the matter, the date, a summary of the client's instructions, the advice given, and the agreed action points with ownership and timeframe.

Practise writing one under time pressure. It is a different skill from the interview itself. You need to translate a real-time conversation into a clear, concise professional document in a short window. Even one or two practice runs makes a significant difference.

How much practice do you actually need

You do not need hundreds of practice runs. I barely did any mocks in the final weeks.

What I did was understand the structure, know the law for each scenario type, and do a small number of focused sessions where I practised the flow out loud. For client interviewing, I practised with someone asking me questions so I could experience the reality of listening, responding and noting at the same time.

If you are sitting in a few weeks and have not done much practice yet, a handful of targeted sessions will do more for you than ten hours of re-reading notes. Get the structure in your head. Know the law. Say it out loud. That is the preparation that matters.