SQE Explained: The Solicitors Qualifying Examination Route to Becoming a Solicitor

Since September 2021, almost everyone qualifying as a solicitor of England and Wales has done so through the Solicitors Qualifying Examination, or SQE, rather than the Legal Practice Course route it replaced. Understanding how the SQE actually works matters not just for aspiring solicitors, but for firms designing training programmes and for professionals following other legal routes, such as the CILEX CPQ pathway, considering how their own qualification compares.

Why the SQE replaced the LPC

The previous route to qualification — a qualifying law degree or the Graduate Diploma in Law, followed by the Legal Practice Course and a two-year training contract — varied significantly in rigour between providers, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority wanted a single, centrally set standard that every solicitor met regardless of which university or course provider they studied with. The SQE was designed against a defined "Threshold Standard" setting out exactly what a competent newly qualified solicitor should know and be able to do, tested the same way for every candidate rather than through a patchwork of individually accredited courses.

SQE1: Functioning Legal Knowledge

SQE1 tests legal knowledge through two exam papers, each made up of 180 multiple-choice-style questions (technically single-best-answer questions from five options), sat across two days for a combined total of around ten hours. The two papers, commonly called FLK1 and FLK2, cover different areas of legal knowledge, and candidates who fail one paper only need to resit that specific paper rather than the whole assessment, which reduces the cost and disruption of a single weak area compared to having to retake everything.

SQE2: Practical Legal Skills

SQE2 shifts from knowledge recall to practical skills, assessed across five practice areas — business law, dispute resolution, criminal litigation, property practice, and wills and estate administration. Candidates are tested on six core skills through a combination of oral assessments (client interviewing and advocacy) and written assessments (case and matter analysis, legal research, legal drafting and legal writing), delivered through realistic simulated scenarios, including trained actors playing clients, across roughly sixteen separate "stations" over about five days of assessment.

Qualifying Work Experience

Alongside passing both stages of the SQE, candidates need to complete two years of qualifying work experience (QWE). Unlike the old training contract model, QWE can be built up across as many as four different organisations, doesn't have to be continuous, and can include relevant experience gained before starting the SQE itself — a law student who worked at a law centre or did a placement at a firm may be able to count that time, provided it meets the SRA's criteria for the kind of experience that develops the competencies solicitors need.

Degree requirement

Unlike the old route, the SQE doesn't require a qualifying law degree, or indeed any degree in a specific subject — candidates need a degree in any discipline, or equivalent experience, plus a character and suitability assessment, alongside passing both stages of the SQE and completing QWE. This deliberately widens access to the profession beyond the traditional law-degree pipeline.

How this compares to other routes into legal practice

The SQE sits alongside, rather than replaces, other established routes into legal practice — the CILEX CPQ route remains a distinct path to becoming a Chartered Legal Executive, and other specialist professions, including licensed conveyancers, costs lawyers, and patent and trade mark attorneys, retain their own separate qualification frameworks entirely outside the SQE system, reflecting how fragmented UK legal profession entry routes remain even after the SQE's introduction.

Preparing for the SQE

Because the SQE is centrally set and marked, preparation courses vary enormously in format and price, ranging from intensive full-time courses to part-time and self-study options built around candidates continuing to work while they prepare. Many candidates combine SQE1 preparation with the early part of their qualifying work experience, sitting the knowledge-based assessment before or alongside starting a QWE placement, then moving on to SQE2's practical skills assessment once they have more hands-on experience to draw on. Firms designing training programmes around the SQE also need to think carefully about how QWE is structured and evidenced, since candidates and their supervisors both need to be able to demonstrate, retrospectively if necessary, that the experience gained genuinely developed the competencies the SRA expects of a newly qualified solicitor.

What the SQE costs

The assessment fees are set by the SRA and paid to Kaplan, which delivers the exams. For 2026/27 they are £2,006 for SQE1 and £3,086 for SQE2 — £5,092 to sit both once. The increase from £1,934 and £2,974 took effect from the start of the academic year in September 2026 and applies to candidates booking from October 2026 onwards. The SRA attributes the rise to inflation and to the cost of translating the assessments into Welsh.

Two things are worth being clear about. First, those are assessment fees only. Preparation courses are a separate market with separate pricing, and the SRA neither sets nor approves them — there is no required course and no official provider. Second, a resit means paying the fee again. A candidate who passes SQE1 at the second attempt and SQE2 at the first has paid more than £7,000 in assessment fees before any preparation costs, so the real cost of qualifying depends heavily on passing first time.

What the pass rates show

The SRA publishes performance data for every sitting. Its annual report suite published on 21 April 2026, covering the fourth full year of the SQE, shows a pattern worth understanding before you book.

• SQE1 is volatile between sittings. The January 2025 sitting returned a 56% pass rate, the same as the equivalent sitting the year before. The July 2025 sitting returned 41%, down from 44%.
• SQE2 passes at a much higher rate. The overall SQE2 pass rate rose from 76% to 81%. The SRA links part of that improvement to fewer candidates sitting SQE2 without having sat SQE1 under the transitional arrangements.

The gap between the two is the single most useful fact in the data. SQE1 is where candidates fail, and it is the stage that tests breadth of Functioning Legal Knowledge across the whole syllabus under multiple-choice conditions. SQE2 tests skills in a narrower set of practice contexts, with a cohort that has already cleared the knowledge hurdle. Planning preparation time as though the two stages carry equal risk is a mistake the data does not support.

The SRA has also said publicly that confidence in the assessment is not as high as it would like, and that it is committed to further changes. Candidates planning two or three years ahead should expect the detail of the assessment to keep moving, and should check the current specification rather than relying on a description written for an earlier cohort.

Planning the two stages

Because SQE1 and SQE2 are assessed separately and sat at different times of year, the route is best planned backwards from a target admission date rather than forwards from a start date. Three constraints shape it.

• Booking windows close well before the sitting. Registration for a sitting closes weeks ahead of the assessment itself, and results follow weeks after it, so a failed sitting typically costs more than one calendar quarter.
• Qualifying work experience can run in parallel. The two years of QWE do not have to follow the assessments, which is the main structural difference from the old training contract and the main opportunity for candidates already working in legal services.
• SQE2 preparation is a different exercise. It is skills-assessed rather than knowledge-assessed, and our SQE2 preparation guide covers what that changes in practice.

You do not necessarily need a law degree — or a degree

The SRA's first qualification requirement is a degree in any subject or an equivalent level 6 qualification. That second limb does a lot of work and is routinely missed.

It means the SQE is reachable without a university degree at all, provided the candidate holds a level 6 qualification the SRA accepts as equivalent. In practice that opens the route to people coming through the CILEx professional qualification, solicitor apprenticeships and experienced paralegals who have qualified by another path rather than at eighteen. It is also why the old distinction between law and non-law graduates has largely stopped mattering: there is no conversion course requirement, because SQE1 tests the knowledge directly regardless of how it was acquired.

What it does not do is remove the assessment. Whichever door a candidate comes through, both stages of the SQE and two years of qualifying work experience still have to be completed, and the suitability checks still apply. For candidates weighing the alternatives, our guides to the CILEx Chartered Legal Executive route and to paralegal qualifications and routes set out what each one leads to.

Related guides

• SQE2 preparation: a practical guide
• Paralegal qualifications and routes in the UK
• SRA continuing competence explained for solicitors
• Legal CPD in Ireland and the UK: the complete guide

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a law degree to sit the SQE? No — the SQE can be taken with a degree in any subject, or equivalent qualifying experience, unlike the old qualifying law degree requirement.

Can I complete qualifying work experience with more than one employer? Yes, QWE can be built up across up to four different organisations and doesn't need to be continuous.

What happens if I fail one SQE1 paper but pass the other? You only need to resit the paper you failed, not both.

Is the LPC still available? The SQE is now the primary route for new candidates; anyone already partway through the old LPC/training contract route before the transition typically had the option to complete qualification under the previous system within a set transitional period.

There is more on the legal and ethical framework in our ethics and legal CPD.