INTRODUCTION
Law Angels prepares people to qualify as solicitors in England and Wales. I was the sole UI/UX designer, working from first stakeholder conversations through research, IA, flows, wireframes, UI and handoff to supporting the build.
The exam shapes everything
Almost every decision in this product traces back to the mechanics of the assessment, so I started by learning it properly.
SQE1 is two assessments, each testing what the SRA calls Functioning Legal Knowledge. FLK1 covers business law and practice, dispute resolution, contract, tort, the legal system, and constitutional and administrative law. FLK2 covers property practice, wills and estates, solicitors' accounts, land law, trusts, and criminal law and practice. Each is 180 single-best-answer questions delivered in two sittings of 90 questions in 153 minutes. Ethics runs through both rather than sitting as its own paper.
That leaves roughly 1.7 minutes per question, across ten hours of examination, on scenario questions that often run a full paragraph. Pace isn't a nice-to-have skill here. It's most of the exam.
Four things going wrong
These four came out of the survey and interviews rather than out of a brief. Each card notes which part of the research it traces back to.
Who this is for
First-time and repeat SQE1 candidates preparing without an employer-funded course.
Many SQE candidates do not study within a conventional full-time classroom environment. They balance preparation with employment, commuting and other responsibilities, often funding the examination and preparation themselves. A fail costs roughly two thousand pounds and six months.
Four profiles came out of the research, separated by what a candidate already knows and how they fund their preparation rather than by background, because those were the two variables that changed what each one needed from the product.
How I worked out what to build
A mixed-method approach to understand how SQE1 candidates organised their study, where existing preparation tools were failing them, and what they needed from a single learning platform.
Approach
42 survey responses from current SQE1 candidates.
8 semi-structured candidate interviews.
2 rounds of usability testing with 5 participants in each round.
A competitive review of 7 exam-preparation and question-bank products.
Stakeholder interviews with the founder and legal content team.
A content audit covering 13 courses, 122 videos and thousands of practice questions and flashcards.
Sitting the SRA's published sample questions against a clock myself, to feel the time pressure rather than be told about it.
Participants were recruited through the founder's network, LinkedIn and online SQE study communities. The interview group included four first-time candidates, two re-sitters and two candidates from non-law academic backgrounds. Six of the eight were studying while working full time.
The survey gave me a broader view of recurring behaviours. The interviews explained why those behaviours were happening
Quantitative findings
Five behaviours recurred across the survey.
Qualitative analysis
I recorded the interviews, extracted significant statements and grouped them through affinity mapping, organising observations by behaviour, motivation, frustration and unmet need. Five themes appeared repeatedly.
