A tax lawyer in São Paulo with nine years behind her writes to us most months, in one form or another. The message reads something like this: "I already litigate. I already advise boards. Do I really have to sit 360 multiple choice questions about topics I have never touched?" Sometimes the sender is an advocate in Delhi, sometimes a Rechtsanwältin in Frankfurt, sometimes a New York associate whose firm has just opened a London desk. The frustration is identical, and it is understandable.
Here is the uncomfortable truth, said kindly: your existing qualification buys you far less time than you expect on the knowledge side, and far more than you expect on the skills side. Understanding that asymmetry early is the single biggest advantage an international candidate can give themselves.
What the SQE Actually Demands From an Internationally Qualified Lawyer
The route to solicitor qualification in England and Wales has four limbs: a degree or equivalent qualification, SQE1, SQE2, two years of qualifying work experience, and the SRA's character and suitability requirements. Nothing about being qualified elsewhere removes those limbs automatically.
The SRA does operate an exemption process for lawyers already qualified in another jurisdiction. Exemptions are assessed against what you have already been examined on and what you have actually done in practice, and they are granted on application with supporting evidence — not by assumption, and not by reputation of your home bar. Some applicants secure an exemption from SQE2; some secure nothing at all. Check the current SRA position for your jurisdiction before you build a study plan around a hope.
Plan on the assumption that you will sit everything. If an exemption arrives, you have gained months. If you planned around an exemption that never comes, you have lost them.
The mechanics are the same for everyone. SQE1 is two papers — FLK1 and FLK2 — each containing 180 single best answer questions, each running 5 hours 20 minutes. SQE2 tests five skills: client interviewing with attendance note, advocacy, case and matter analysis, legal research and legal writing/drafting. There is no discount for seniority in either.
Rewiring Civil-Law Habits for FLK1 and FLK2
If you trained in a codified system, the hardest adjustment is not vocabulary. It is the source hierarchy. English law is a conversation between statute and decided cases, and the cases are not illustrations — they are law. When you read that a duty of care in negligence traces to Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, you are not reading persuasive commentary. You are reading the rule.
Three habits tend to slow civil-law-trained candidates down in the FLK1 subjects:
- Looking for a code section that does not exist. Contract formation, misrepresentation and most of negligence are common law. There is no article to cite. Learn the case-derived tests as tests.
- Under-reading the facts. A single best answer question is decided by two or three facts planted deliberately. The rest is furniture.
- Reasoning to the "just" outcome. The examiner wants the legally correct answer on those facts, even where it is commercially harsh — privity under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 being a classic example of where instinct and rule diverge.
Common law lawyers from other jurisdictions have the opposite problem: over-confidence. If you qualified in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Australia or Canada, the structure will feel familiar and roughly seventy per cent of it will be. The remaining thirty per cent is where marks disappear. English company law has been rewritten by the Companies Act 2006, with directors' duties codified at sections 171 to 177. Partnership questions still run on the Partnership Act 1890. Land is governed by the Law of Property Act 1925 and the Land Registration Act 2002, and the 2002 Act's treatment of overriding interests has no counterpart in many Commonwealth systems. Familiarity is a trap when you skim.
The FLK2 Subjects That Ambush Overseas Candidates
Ask any tutor which papers cause the most damage to internationally qualified candidates and you will hear the same answers.
Solicitor Accounts. Almost nobody arrives with this. It is a rules-based subject about client money, ledgers, transfers and breaches — and it rewards drilling rather than understanding. Twenty minutes a day for six weeks will do more than three intense weekends.
Trusts Law. If your system has no equity, the split between legal and beneficial ownership is genuinely alien. Do not try to translate it into your own law of fiduciary duty or usufruct. Build it fresh: the three certainties, constitution, trustees' duties, breach and the remedies that follow.
Land Law and Property Law and Practice. Registered title, third-party rights, leasehold covenants, then the transactional spine of pre-contract enquiries, exchange and completion. Overseas conveyancing experience helps less than you would think, because the questions are anchored to English procedure.
Wills and the Administration of Estates. Formal validity under the Wills Act 1837, failure of gifts, intestacy, and the tax overlay. Succession is deeply national; assume none of your home rules transfer.
And on the FLK1 side, do not underestimate Legal Services. The SRA Principles and Codes of Conduct set out a professional ethic that may differ from your own bar's rules on conflicts, confidentiality and undertakings. Ethics points are embedded across both papers, not quarantined in one corner.
SQE2: Where Your Practice Experience Finally Pays
Here is the good news for a practising lawyer. SQE2 asks you to interview a client, present an argument, analyse a matter, research a point and write like a solicitor. You have done versions of all five. What you must adapt is register and format.
English solicitors' correspondence is plain, structured and unshowy. Long Latinate sentences, elaborate courtesies and dense subordinate clauses read as unprofessional to an English assessor, however elegant they seem in your first language. Short sentences. Clear headings. Advice the client can act on. If your written English is competent but formal, spend real time reading English attendance notes and client letters until the rhythm becomes automatic.
The legal research task deserves separate rehearsal. It runs for 60 minutes on the Pearson VUE closed platform — no browser, no internet, no Boolean operators. Your only search tool is Ctrl+F within the supplied materials. Lawyers who have spent a decade on sophisticated commercial databases often find this the most disorientating part of the whole assessment. Practise it as a mechanical skill: choose one narrow search term, read around the hit, refine.
Accent is not assessed. Clarity, structure and client focus are. Speak a little more slowly than feels natural in advocacy and interviewing, and signpost your structure aloud.
Does Your Overseas Experience Count as QWE?
Often, yes — and this is the part international candidates most frequently overlook. Qualifying work experience can be gained in up to four organisations, before or after the assessments, and it can be gained outside England and Wales. What matters is that you provided legal services and had the opportunity to develop the competences in the SRA's Statement of Solicitor Competence.
Two practical points. Your QWE must be confirmed by a solicitor of England and Wales or by a compliance officer for legal practice; if your former supervisor is not one, identify now who can confirm it and whether they can properly do so. And record your experience against the competences in writing, contemporaneously where possible, with dates and matter types. Trying to reconstruct four years of work at an Indian firm from memory in 2029 is a miserable exercise.
Character and suitability is the other limb to handle early rather than late. Disclose regulatory matters, bankruptcies or criminal findings from any jurisdiction honestly and promptly. Non-disclosure is treated far more seriously than the underlying issue in most cases.
A Working Plan for the Next Twelve Months
What should you actually do, starting this week?
- Confirm your degree equivalency and submit any exemption application, with evidence, before you commit to a sitting.
- Sit a short diagnostic across FLK1 and FLK2 topics. Be honest about the zero-knowledge subjects — usually Solicitor Accounts, Trusts and Wills.
- Front-load the alien subjects. Familiar territory can wait; unfamiliar territory needs repeated exposure over months, not a sprint.
- Move to question practice by roughly the halfway point, and time yourself. 180 questions in 5 hours 20 minutes leaves under two minutes each.
- Start a QWE log today, even if your current role is overseas.
- Book SQE2 preparation only after SQE1 is behind you — but begin reading English drafting now, in the background.
One last thought. The candidates who struggle most are rarely the weakest lawyers; they are the ones who assumed experience would substitute for study. The ones who pass comfortably treat the SQE as a new jurisdiction to learn, not an inconvenience to survive. Which will you be?
How CELE SQE Can Help
We have taught internationally qualified lawyers since the very first SQE sitting in 2021, and our courses cover all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 — Long-term £3,720, Mid-term £2,750, Short-term £1,750, with a single FLK option at half price and £150 off for early birds or those booking within three months of the exam. If you only need drilling, the SQE1 question bank runs at £575 per month, and the full textbook set is £950 (£570 for a single FLK). Our SQE2 course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built one-to-one to the official SRA format, which is the closest rehearsal you will get to the real closed platform. Questions about exemptions or QWE from your jurisdiction? WeChat SQE100, [email protected], or celebar.com — we are happy to talk it through before you spend anything.
