How to Qualify as a Solicitor: Routes, Costs and Pay

There is no minimum salary for trainee solicitors in England and Wales. The Solicitors Regulation Authority abolished it on 1 August 2014 and replaced it with the National Minimum Wage — the same floor that applies to any other worker. As of April 2026 that floor is £12.71 an hour for anyone aged 21 or over.

That single fact shapes the economics of qualifying, and it is routinely misunderstood. This guide covers the routes to qualification, what each costs, and what you can and cannot establish about pay. For the mechanics of the exam itself, our guide to the Solicitors Qualifying Examination goes deeper on assessment structure; this one is about the route, the money and the choices.

What the SRA actually requires

Four things, and only four:

• A UK degree in any subject, or an equivalent qualification or experience, or an overseas equivalent
• A pass in both stages of the SQE
• Two years' full-time, or equivalent, qualifying work experience
• Meeting the SRA's character and suitability requirements

Note what is absent. There is no requirement to hold a law degree, no requirement to complete a training contract at a firm, and no requirement that your work experience be paid.

What the SQE costs

Assessment fees from September 2026, which are the rates now in force:

• SQE1: £2,006 — £1,003 for each of the two Functioning Legal Knowledge assessments
• SQE2: £3,086
• Total: £5,092, VAT exempt

For assessments taken up to September 2026 the figures were £1,934 and £2,974. Resits cost the same per component, so failing one FLK costs £1,003 to retake and failing both costs the full £2,006.

These are assessment fees only. They exclude preparation courses, which the SRA neither regulates nor prices, and which are typically the larger cost. Admission itself adds £100 for the application and £34 for background screening, with a separate fee for your first practising certificate.

Pass rates, and the pattern in them

The SRA publishes these, which is more than most regulators do. The most recent sittings:

• SQE1, July 2026: 47 per cent for first-time candidates, 42 per cent across all candidates. FLK1 54 and 50 per cent; FLK2 52 and 50 per cent. Resitters made up roughly a quarter of each cohort.
• SQE1, January 2026: 58 per cent first attempt, 53 per cent overall, across 7,918 candidates. The passing scaled score is 300 for each FLK.
• SQE2, April 2026: 85 per cent first attempt, 83 per cent overall, across 2,966 candidates graded.

Over four years the cumulative figures are 66 per cent for SQE1 across all attempts and 54.3 per cent at first attempt, against 85 and 79.6 per cent for SQE2.

Two patterns are worth knowing before you book. First, January sittings consistently outperform July ones on SQE1 — 62 then 50 per cent in 2026, 64 then 51 per cent in 2025. Second, resitters pass at around 20 per cent, so a first attempt is worth preparing properly for rather than treating as a diagnostic.

Solicitor apprentices do markedly better than the field: roughly 71 per cent on SQE1 and 93 per cent on SQE2.

One change to diarise. From the January 2027 sitting each FLK drops from 180 questions to 170, with 85 per session and sessions of two hours 33 minutes, and questions will no longer be spread across both sessions by subject area.

Qualifying work experience, and why it matters for pay

QWE is the most flexible part of the route and the least understood.

• Two years full-time or equivalent, across up to four organisations
• It must involve providing real legal services. Simulated work does not count
• It must give exposure to at least two of the SRA's solicitor competences. A role touching only one does not qualify
• It can be paid or unpaid
• It can be gained in England, Wales or overseas, and before, during or after the SQE assessments, including retrospectively

Eligible settings include training contracts, paralegal roles, law degree placements, law clinics, law centres and voluntary or charity work. Confirmation comes from a solicitor of England and Wales or a Compliance Officer for Legal Practice, who need not hold a practising certificate or work for the same organisation, but must have reviewed the work. They confirm the length, that legal services were provided and that at least two competences could be developed. They do not certify that you are competent.

The consequence for pay is direct: because QWE need not be paid and need not be a training contract, the route is open to people who could not previously qualify, and it simultaneously removes any structural guarantee of a trainee-level salary.

What you can and cannot establish about pay

This section is deliberately cautious, because almost every salary figure circulating in this market is less authoritative than it looks.

The regulator sets no floor

The SRA Board decided in May 2012 to remove the prescribed minimum salary and implemented it on 1 August 2014, replacing it with a requirement to pay at least the National Minimum Wage. Its published position is that salary levels should be set by market forces and the profession itself. The SRA's current page on the period of recognised training says nothing about pay at all.

So the legal floor is the statutory one. From 1 April 2026: £12.71 an hour at 21 and over, £10.85 at 18 to 20, and £8.00 under 18 or for apprentices in the first year. Rates of £13.21, £11.27 and £8.31 are already announced for 1 April 2027.

The Law Society recommendation is in flux

The Law Society has historically published a recommended minimum, reviewed each June and effective from 1 September, with no sanction for non-compliance. The last clearly dated figure is £28,090 in London and £24,916 outside London for 2025/26, announced on 22 July 2025.

Legal trade press reported in September 2026 that the Law Society stopped publishing an annual recommended minimum, replacing it with a suggestion that firms pay at least the real Living Wage. That could not be confirmed on the Law Society's own site, where the relevant page would not load.

A related warning for anyone researching this. The Law Society website currently serves at least four different trainee salary figures on four different pages, none of them carrying a visible date — £28,090/£24,916, £27,418/£24,320, £26,068/£23,122 and £23,703/£21,024. Those appear to be the 2025/26, 2024/25, 2023/24 and 2022/23 rates respectively, but the pages do not say so. Do not take a figure from any of them without dating it.

There is no official data by experience level

Neither the SRA nor the Law Society publishes a current dataset of solicitor salaries by post-qualification experience or by firm type. The Law Society's own earnings page gives a median of £62,000 for full-time private practice solicitors in 2018, with regional and seniority breakdowns that carry no year at all and no named source.

Every PQE-banded figure in circulation originates from recruitment agency surveys or trade press compilations. Those are self-selecting commercial surveys, not official statistics, and should be attributed by name rather than presented as market rates. The Office for National Statistics annual survey of hours and earnings is the only genuinely official source that reaches occupational detail, and it does not break down by PQE or firm type either.

A final trap: the government publishes solicitors' guideline hourly rates, which are rates for assessing costs between parties in litigation. They are not earnings and should never be presented as such.

The other routes

The LPC, closing on 31 December 2032

The old route survives only for a defined group. You can still use it if you completed the Common Professional Examination or Graduate Diploma in Law accepted before 1 September 2021; or accepted an offer for a qualifying or exempting law degree by 21 September 2021, started before 31 December 2021 and have since graduated; or deferred a 2020/21 offer and started by 31 August 2022.

Anyone who began a qualifying law degree in September 2022 or later is not eligible. Both LPC stages must be completed within five years, and the hard deadline to apply for admission is 31 December 2032. After that, the SQE is the only route.

The solicitor apprenticeship

Standard ST0246, now at version 2.0 for starts from 1 May 2026. Level 7, equivalent to a master's degree, with a typical duration of 72 months and maximum government funding of £27,000. It includes the SQE, and the assessment fees are covered by the apprenticeship levy. Recommended entry is five GCSEs including maths and English plus three A levels at grade C or above, or relevant experience.

One caution: government funding for level 7 apprenticeships is now restricted by eligibility criteria, so check whether a given candidate qualifies before assuming the SQE comes free.

CILEX

Regulated separately by CILEx Regulation, the CILEX Professional Qualification runs in three stages — Foundation, conferring CILEX Paralegal status; Advanced, conferring CILEX Advanced Paralegal; and Professional, conferring CILEX Lawyer. CILEX's own indicative timings are 18 months to two years for each of the first two stages and 12 to 18 months for the third, with qualification possible in as little as three years.

CILEX Law School prices total £12,855 across the three stages, with exam entry fees additional. Those prices are marked correct at March 2024.

Three differences matter. No degree is required, making it the main route open to school leavers. You must be employed throughout, because each stage carries a professional experience requirement. And you specialise early, with practice rights confined to your chosen area rather than general. CILEX qualification is also a recognised SRA pathway to cross-qualify as a solicitor later.

CILEX's published pages are inconsistently maintained and parts still reference deadlines from 2022 and 2023, so verify any figure with CILEX directly.

Character and suitability

Assessed on application for admission and ongoing thereafter. Nothing needs disclosing when you start studying. The SRA's test is whether any information suggests you are not fit to practise, covering criminal conduct, behaviour bearing on integrity, assessment offences, financial conduct, regulatory findings and health conditions.

Early assessment is available at any time and there is no fee, though a decision at that stage does not bind the SRA on a later application. If you have anything that might bite, that is the sensible first step rather than the last.

The honest summary

Qualifying costs at least £5,092 in SQE assessment fees plus £134 in admission and screening, before any preparation course. Roughly half of candidates pass SQE1 at the first attempt and resitters pass at around one in five. The work experience requirement is flexible enough to be done unpaid. And no regulator or professional body currently guarantees you a salary above the statutory minimum wage while you do it.

That combination is why the route has widened access and squeezed trainee pay at the same time. For what the profession requires once you are qualified, see continuing competence and CPD for solicitors in the UK and Ireland, and for a contrasting model India imposes no continuing requirement on advocates at all.