SQE2 Client Interviewing: Structure the Meeting and the Note

The client sits down, you smile, and then your mind goes blank. What do I ask first? How much do I let them talk? When do I stop scribbling and actually listen? If you've done any mock interviews for SQE2, you'll know the feeling — the assessment isn't hard because the law is obscure. It's hard because you're being marked on how you handle a human being under time pressure, and then on whether the note you leave behind would actually be usable by a colleague who never met that person.

Client Interviewing is one of the five practical skills SQE2 assesses, and it comes bundled with an attendance note and legal analysis component. So it's really two skills wearing one coat: the live oral performance, and the written record that follows. Candidates who train only for the talking half get a nasty surprise. Let's fix both.

What the SQE2 interview actually tests

SQE2 assesses five practical legal skills across a range of practice areas: Client Interviewing (with attendance note and legal analysis), Advocacy, Case and Matter Analysis, Legal Research, and Legal Writing and Drafting. The interview station is oral — you meet a "client" (a trained role-player) — and it's followed by a written task where you record what happened and analyse it.

Two things get marked, broadly. Your skills: did you build rapport, listen actively, structure the meeting, identify the client's concerns and objectives, and give a sensible way forward? And the application of law: did you spot the legally relevant facts, ask the questions a competent solicitor would ask, and reach a defensible view? You don't need to deliver a courtroom-grade advice in twenty minutes. You need to demonstrate that a real client would leave feeling heard and clear on the next step.

One honest observation from the marking side of the fence: examiners can tell within about ninety seconds whether you have a structure or you're improvising. The candidates who drift — no opening, no signposting, questions fired at random — lose marks they never notice losing.

A meeting structure you can run on autopilot

The reason a structure matters is that it frees your brain. If the shape of the meeting is fixed, you can spend your working memory on the client's actual problem rather than on "what next". Here's a five-phase spine that works across practice areas, whether the fact pattern is a boundary dispute or a director worried about a personal guarantee.

1. Open and set the agenda

Greet, confirm who they are, introduce yourself and your role. Then — and people skip this — say roughly how the meeting will run and how long you have. "We've got about twenty-five minutes today. I'd like to hear the situation in your own words first, then I'll ask some questions, and we'll finish by agreeing what happens next. Does that work for you?" That single sentence signposts the whole meeting and buys you permission to steer later.

Mention confidentiality briefly. You don't need a lecture on legal professional privilege; a plain reassurance that what they tell you stays between you is enough to open them up.

2. Listen — properly, without interrupting

Give the client an open invitation: "Tell me what's brought you in." Then shut up. This is the hardest part for anxious candidates, who tend to interrupt after eight seconds because silence feels like failure. It isn't. Let them run. You're listening for the shape of the problem, the emotional temperature, and the facts you'll need to test.

Take light notes here, not verbatim ones. If your head is down transcribing, you miss the flicker where they look away — the thing they're not saying.

3. Question to fill the gaps

Now you narrow. Move from open questions ("How did that conversation go?") to closed ones ("Was that agreement in writing?"). This is where the legal analysis lives: your questions should map onto the elements you'll need to advise on. If it's a possible negligence claim, you're quietly checking duty, breach, causation and loss. If it's an employment issue, you're pinning down dates, contracts and what was said to whom.

• Chronology. Get events in order. Confused timelines are where candidates lose the thread and clients lose confidence.
• Documents. Ask what exists in writing and whether they have it. "Do you have the tenancy agreement with you?" is worth marks and worth reality.
• Objectives. Ask directly what they want. Money? An apology? To keep the relationship? Assume nothing.
• Constraints. Deadlines, budgets, risk appetite. A client who cannot fund litigation needs a different answer.

4. Summarise and advise at the right altitude

Play the facts back: "So if I've understood, you paid the deposit in March, the work stopped in May, and the builder has stopped answering calls — is that right?" This does two jobs. It shows you listened, and it catches errors before they poison your advice.

Then advise proportionately. You're not expected to resolve everything. Outline the options, flag the obvious risks, and be honest about what you'd need to check. "Off the top of my head there are two routes, but I'd want to look at the contract wording before committing." That's a competent solicitor talking, not a hedge.

5. Close with clear next steps

Agree who does what by when. You'll review documents; they'll send the emails; you'll write to them by a stated point. Confirm you'll follow up, thank them, done. A meeting that ends in a fog of "I'll be in touch" reads as weak on the mark scheme.

The interview isn't a quiz you're passing. It's a service you're delivering to a person who is, in that moment, worried. Solve their problem calmly and the marks follow.

The attendance note: the half candidates underrate

Here's the trap. You nail the conversation, feel great, then produce an attendance note that's a wall of undated ramble. In practice — and QWE will hammer this home — an attendance note is a working document. A colleague picking up the file must be able to reconstruct what happened, what was advised, and what's outstanding, without having been in the room.

A clean attendance note is boringly reliable in its structure:

1. Header block. Client name, matter, date and time of the meeting, who was present, and who prepared the note. Dull, essential.
2. Purpose. One line on why the meeting happened.
3. Facts as instructed. A tidy chronological account of what the client told you. Neutral, ordered, factual.
4. Advice given. What you actually said, framed as advice — not a legal essay. If you flagged a risk, record it.
5. Next steps and responsibilities. Action points, who owns each, and any deadlines.
6. Legal analysis. Where the task asks for it separately, set out the relevant law and how it applies to these facts — this is where you show the reasoning behind the advice.

Two habits lift a note from adequate to strong. First, separate fact from advice ruthlessly — a reader must be able to see what the client said versus what you told them. Second, be specific about actions. "Client to consider options" is worthless. "Client to email the builder's final invoice to us by Friday; we will write a letter before action within seven days of receipt" is a note that runs a file.

Timing: write like you've only got minutes, because you have

You won't have long for the written component, so your live notes need to feed the attendance note directly. Train yourself to jot a running column of dates and action points during the interview — not full sentences, just anchors. When the writing clock starts, you're transcribing structure, not remembering it. This is a rehearsable mechanical skill, and it's genuinely worth practising against a stopwatch until it stops feeling frantic.

A worked example

Let's make it concrete. Your fact pattern: Priya Nair, a sole trader running a small café, comes in about a supplier. She ordered a bespoke commercial coffee machine for £6,000, paid a £3,000 deposit in January, was promised delivery "within eight weeks", and it's now four months later with no machine and vague excuses. She's losing trade. She's furious and slightly embarrassed to be here.

Open: you greet her, set the agenda, reassure on confidentiality. Twenty seconds of warmth visibly settles her.

Listen: she tells the story, jumping around emotionally. You don't interrupt. You note the £3,000, "eight weeks", "January", "no machine".

Question: you now go for the legally load-bearing facts. Was the eight weeks in writing, or a phone promise? (It's in an email — good, that helps.) What exactly did the order confirmation say about delivery? Has she paid the balance? (No.) Has she told them, in writing, that she now needs it urgently? (No.) What does she actually want — the machine, or her deposit back and out? (The deposit back; she's bought a cheaper model elsewhere out of desperation.)

That last answer changes everything. You were half-building an advice about compelling delivery; her objective is a clean exit and her money. Because you asked, you don't waste the close on the wrong remedy.

Summarise and advise: "So you've paid £3,000, they've missed a delivery date they put in writing, you've now sourced an alternative, and you'd like your deposit returned and to end the contract." You outline, at the right altitude, that a clear breach of the agreed timescale may entitle her to treat the contract as at an end and seek her deposit back, but you'd want to read the written terms — particularly anything on delivery being an estimate or a firm date — before committing. You flag that a firm letter setting a final deadline is a sensible first move before anything formal.

Close: she'll send you the order confirmation and the email chain by Wednesday; you'll review and write to her with a recommended letter before Friday. She leaves calmer than she arrived. That, in a sentence, is the whole assessment.

Now the attendance note writes itself, because your live notes already hold the anchors. Header, purpose, chronology (deposit in January, written eight-week promise, four months elapsed, alternative machine sourced), advice given (possible right to terminate and reclaim deposit, subject to reviewing the terms), next steps (client sends documents by Wednesday; solicitor to advise and draft letter by Friday), and a short legal analysis of breach and the deposit position applied to these facts.

How this fits your wider SQE preparation

SQE2 sits at the practical end of the journey to solicitor qualification in England and Wales. Before it, most candidates clear SQE1 — the two functioning legal knowledge assessments, FLK1 and FLK2, each a set of single-best-answer multiple-choice questions covering thirteen subjects between them. Alongside the exams you'll need a qualifying degree or equivalent, two years of qualifying work experience (QWE), and to satisfy the SRA's character and suitability requirements. If any of the procedural detail on QWE or suitability is unclear, the authoritative position lives on sra.org.uk — check it there rather than trusting hearsay.

People ask about SQE pass rates constantly, usually while doom-scrolling. The honest guidance: treat published rates as a rough weather report, not a prophecy about you. The SRA publishes figures after each sitting, and those are the numbers to look at — for the current position and any assessment dates or fees, go to sqe.sra.org.uk rather than relying on a half-remembered statistic.

Why mention SQE1 in an SQE2 interviewing article? Because the mental muscle is shared. The habit that makes you a good interviewer — reading a fact pattern, spotting which facts are legally load-bearing, and ignoring the decorative ones — is exactly the muscle that gets FLK1 and FLK2 single-best-answer questions right. If you drill enough well-written MCQs, you start seeing the legally relevant fact in a live interview faster, because you've trained your eye to strip out noise.

That's where structured question practice earns its keep. Working through a large, well-tagged bank like the Ant Law SQE Question Bank — with practice sorted by FLK subject and sub-topic, and mistakes fed back to you for spaced repetition — builds the issue-spotting reflex that transfers straight into the interview room. You're not just memorising; you're rehearsing the "which fact matters?" decision hundreds of times.

A quick self-test before your next mock

• Can you open a meeting, signpost the agenda, and cover confidentiality in under a minute without notes?
• Do you consistently ask the client, in plain words, what outcome they actually want?
• When you summarise, do you play the facts back before advising?
• Could a colleague run the file from your attendance note alone?
• Is fact clearly separated from advice in your writing?

If you hesitated on any of those, that's your next practice session sorted.

The takeaway

Good interviewing isn't charisma. It's a repeatable structure — open, listen, question, summarise, close — married to a disciplined note that a stranger could pick up cold. Rehearse the shape until it's automatic, practise writing the note against a clock, and keep sharpening the underlying legal instinct so you spot what matters in the moment.

Next step: run one full mock this week — twenty-five minutes live, then write the attendance note under time — and be brutally honest about which of the five phases wobbled. To keep the underlying issue-spotting sharp between mocks, put in some focused FLK1 and FLK2 reps with the Ant Law SQE Question Bank at antlaw.ai. The eye you train on the multiple-choice fact patterns is the same eye you'll bring to the client across the desk.