Law degree and GDL students looking to work as solicitors may be taking a gamble by waiting until 2020 to proceed to the professional stage of their education. The new central examination from the Solicitors' Regulation Authority, the Solicitors' Qualifying Examination, is scheduled to become the sole route to working as a solicitor. The SRA has introduced the exam partly because providers of the Legal Practice Course - the most common route to gain a traineeship with a lawyer - have been found to require widely differing standards. In the introduction to the SRA's consultation on introducing a new central exam it highlighted issues includin that "The Pass rates vary on the LPC from below 50 percent to 100 percent, for reasons which we do not fully understand...There is no clear performance standard to help guide firms to make decisions about whether their trainees are competent to qualify."

In the interim, the SRA's admission of differing standards could be a spur for anyone hoping to complete the LPC to have a good look around the standard of the education and the pass marks required at varying course providers to see which might actually suit their needs best. 

Like other providers of learning and revision resources, LawMindMaps will be reviewing its content to ensure LawMindMaps can be used for the new exam.