Vaibhavi recently passed stage 1 of the UK Solicitors Qualification Exam and has some advice to share.
Vaibhavi Shaunak (Commercial and Corporate Laws LLM, 2022) is a qualified attorney from India and a QMUL alumna who has recently cleared stage 1 of the UK Solicitors Qualification Exam (SQE) in March 2023. She sat for the January 2023 round of SQE1, shortly after the QMUL graduation ceremony.
Vaibhavi is a 2018 graduate of the National Law University of Delhi, India and landed a legal associate role through her campus placements in the corporate law vertical of Trilegal, a tier-1 law firm in India. After working with Trilegal for 3 years across a wide variety of cross-border Merges & Acquisitions transactions, she quit to pursue her masters degree in commercial and corporate laws with QMUL.
She credits QMUL for bestowing a deeper academic and theoretical understanding to the practical aspects she has practiced in her career as an M&A lawyer – “The wide variety of subjects that were available for me to pick allowed me to truly customise my degree to further augment my learnings from my work experience so far. Modules such as Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance Law helped me develop a holistic understanding of how and why agreements are structured a certain way. Further, being a foreign qualified lawyer, being able to pick modules that introduced me to UK commercial laws held me in great stead on my journey towards becoming a qualified solicitor in the UK and giving the SQEs as well.”
In relation to sitting the SQE, Vaibhavi had the following advice to share for all future candidates – “Stage 1 of the exam comprehensively tests your knowledge of English law, therefore the syllabus for the exam and the sheer volume of study material can seem daunting at times. However, it is important to work methodically and allocate sufficient time for both studying and testing your learnings through practice questions. The key to cracking the exam is doing lots of practise tests! This allows you to familiarise yourself with the testing pattern and the long duration of the exam, which takes place over two days.”
Shortly after clearing the exam, Vaibhavi has relocated to New Delhi, India. She is currently working as an M&A attorney while simultaneously preparing to clear the next stage of the SQEs to become a dual qualified solicitor in UK and India.
Read for more information about Solicitors Qualifying Examination route.