Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) is a series of two examinations for the license to practice as a

solicitor A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

designed for foreign-licensed lawyers. The QLTS supplanted the

Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test {{Use British English, date=February 2015 The Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test (QLTT) was a regulatory exam for foreign licensed lawyers who wanted to practice as solicitors in England and Wales. From 2010, the test was gradually phased out in fa ...

(QLTT) on 1 September 2010. The QLTS assessment was designed to increase the number of recognised foreign jurisdictions for the examinations. These changes have opened up the English legal market to qualified lawyers from places as diverse as Korea, Japan and Russia.

Format

The QLTS assessment has two parts: a Multiple Choice Test (MCT) and an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). The MCT consists of 180 multiple-choice questions, and the OSCE consists of the following exercises covering five practice areas (

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

probate Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law and accepted as a valid public document that is the true last testament of the deceased, or whereby the estate is settled according to the laws of intestacy in the sta ...

civil litigation Civil law is a major branch of the law.Glanville Williams. ''Learning the Law''. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1982. p. 2. In common law legal systems such as England and Wales and the law of the United States, United States, the term refers to non ...

and criminal litigation) over six days: client interview, completion of attendance note/case analysis, advocacy/oral presentation, legal drafting, legal research and legal writing. The QLTS assessment tests the skills that the

Solicitors Regulation Authority The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is the regulatory body for solicitors in England and Wales. It is responsible for regulating the professional conduct of more than 125,000 solicitors and other authorised individuals at more than 11,000 ...

expects a solicitor to possess on the first day of legal practice, hence the name "Day-One Outcomes". If you are an LPC graduate, you are eligible to claim exemption from the MCT.

Comparison with the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE)

The questions on the MCT are similar in format to those on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) in the United States, but the content is much broader than that of the MBE. In particular, the MCT tests a candidate's knowledge of solicitors' accounts, criminal procedure (not related to constitutional law), tax, bankruptcy, conveyancing, and corporate transactional procedure, topics not found on the MBE.

Training and Testing

One of the major reasons stated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for the creation of the new QLTS was the need to separate training and testing. In contrast to the old QLTT system, the QLTS maintains only one testing authority, Kaplan QLTS (which is a part of

Kaplan, Inc. Kaplan, Inc. is an American for-profit corporation that provides educational and training services to colleges, universities, businesses and individuals around the world. Founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan, the company offers a variety of test prepa ...

). The testing authority is not allowed to provide training or tuition for the examinations. There are providers who offer training for the QLTS assessment, but SRA cannot endorse or recommend any provider.

Future of the QLTS

In May 2017, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) announced the establishment of a new “super exam” called the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), which would gradually replace the QLTS, the LPC and the

Graduate Diploma in Law The Graduate Diploma in Law/Postgraduate Diploma in Law/Common Professional Examination (GDL/PGDL/CPE) is a postgraduate law course in England and Wales that is taken by non-law graduates (graduates who have a degree in a discipline that is not la ...

. In August 2018, the SRA announced that Kaplan had been granted the contract to develop and run the exam for eight years. The SQE will be a two-part national assessment, SQE1 costing £1,558 and SQE2 costing £2,422, and will come into force from 1 September 2021, subject to approval from the Legal Services Board (LSB). The SQE has officially come into force as of 1 September 2021. The last MCT took place in July 2021 and the last OSCE will take place in April 2022. Those that have passed both the MCT and the OSCE must apply for admission by 31 August 2022. Those that have passed only the MCT may take the SQE2 exam instead of the OSCE, in which case the application for admission would need to be made by 31 August 2023.

References

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External links

SRA QLTS
Legal education in the United Kingdom