A candidate emailed us last month with a very specific worry. She had spent twenty-two months as a paralegal in a Leeds high-street firm — disclosure, client care letters, bundles, the occasional advocacy note for a supervising solicitor — then moved in-house to a logistics company. She had passed FLK1 and FLK2 first time. Her question was blunt: "Does any of the paralegal work actually count, or have I wasted two years?"
She had not wasted anything. But she had made one mistake that costs people months: she had recorded nothing at the time, and the solicitor who supervised her had since left the firm. That is the real QWE problem. Not "what counts" — the rules there are broader than most people expect — but proving it years later to someone who has moved on.
What QWE Actually Means for Solicitor Qualification
Qualifying work experience is one of the four limbs of admission under the SQE route, alongside passing SQE1, passing SQE2, and satisfying the SRA's character and suitability requirements. The statutory backdrop sits in the Solicitors Act 1974, which provides for the roll of solicitors, and the regulatory detail sits in the SRA's Authorisation of Individuals Regulations.
The core definition is simple enough to memorise. QWE is work experience providing legal services that gives you the opportunity to develop some or all of the competences in the SRA's Statement of Solicitor Competence. You need two years full-time, or the part-time equivalent. You may draw that experience from up to four organisations. And each period must be confirmed by a solicitor or by the organisation's compliance officer for legal practice.
Notice what is absent. There is no requirement that the work be paid. No requirement that you sit in a particular department, or rotate through a set number of seats, or complete a minimum block of time at any one place. No requirement that the organisation be a law firm at all. The old training contract model, with its prescribed structure, is not the benchmark any more — although if you hold a training contract, that period counts as QWE in the ordinary way.
The question is not "was my job prestigious?" It is "was I providing legal services, and did the role give me the opportunity to develop solicitor competences?" Those are very different tests, and the second one is much easier to satisfy than nervous candidates assume.
What Counts: Paralegal Work, Clinics, In-House and Overseas
Here is the range of experience that routinely qualifies, provided the legal services and competence elements are met:
- Paralegal or legal assistant roles in private practice, whether fee-earning or support-heavy.
- Work in an in-house legal team — banks, insurers, retailers, tech companies, NHS trusts.
- Local authority and government legal departments.
- University law clinics and student advice centres, where you advise real clients under supervision.
- Voluntary work at a law centre, Citizens Advice, or a charity running a legal advice service.
- Placements and vacation schemes with genuine legal work, not just shadowing.
- Pro bono projects with proper supervision and file responsibility.
- Experience gained outside England and Wales, including in your home jurisdiction.
That last point matters enormously to our international candidates. If you have practised as an advocate in Lagos, an in-house counsel in Shanghai, or a junior associate in São Paulo, that work can be recorded as QWE. It does not have to involve English law. What it must involve is the provision of legal services and exposure to competences a solicitor would recognise — client communication, legal research and analysis, drafting, managing a matter, working ethically.
Timing is flexible too. QWE can be completed before you sit SQE1, between SQE1 and SQE2, after both, or in parallel. Experience gained years ago can still be recorded, so long as it meets the criteria and someone appropriate is willing to confirm it. The candidate from Leeds had not wasted anything — she had simply left the paperwork until the worst possible moment.
What Does Not Count
Pure administration with no legal content — scanning, filing, reception cover, diary management — is not the provision of legal services. Nor is passive observation. A week of sitting quietly at the back of a courtroom is valuable education, but it is not QWE. Work you did entirely unsupervised, where no solicitor or compliance officer can honestly confirm what you did, is practically unrecordable even if the substance was sound. And time spent revising for FLK1 and FLK2 is not work experience, however exhausting it feels.
Mapping Your Role to the Statement of Solicitor Competence
The Statement of Solicitor Competence is the spine of the whole system. It is worth printing and keeping beside your desk, because it turns a vague CV entry into evidence. The competences cover ethics and professionalism, technical legal practice, working with other people, and managing yourself and your work.
Take an ordinary week as a litigation paralegal. You drafted a letter before action — that is technical legal practice and written communication. You telephoned a client to explain the costs position — client communication and, depending on what you said, ethics. You spotted that the limitation period was closing under the Limitation Act 1980 and flagged it — analysis, risk, and working within your competence. You researched whether a duty of care existed in a novel factual situation, starting from Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 and working forward through the modern authorities — legal research. That is four or five competences in a single week, from work you might have described on your CV as "assisted with files".
So keep a running log. A simple spreadsheet with date, matter type, task, competence, and supervising solicitor is enough. Ten minutes on a Friday afternoon. When you eventually ask someone to confirm two years of experience, you are handing them a document rather than asking them to reconstruct your working life from memory.
How to Log QWE in mySRA, Step by Step
Recording is done through your mySRA account. The mechanics are not difficult; the discipline is.
- Open a mySRA account early, ideally before your first placement rather than in the week you apply for admission.
- Record each period separately, with the organisation's name, your start and end dates, and the number of days or months of full-time equivalent experience.
- Identify your confirming solicitor — a solicitor of England and Wales, or the organisation's compliance officer for legal practice — and give them advance warning that you will be asking.
- Supply your evidence pack: your competence log, sample redacted work, appraisals, your job description.
- Have the confirmation completed before you leave, or within weeks of leaving. The SRA publishes a template form; use it rather than inventing your own.
- Keep your own copy of every signed confirmation, outside your work email account. People change jobs. Firms merge. Servers get wiped.
Rule of thumb we give every CELE SQE candidate: never leave a job without a signed QWE confirmation in your personal files. Treat it exactly as you would a reference.
If There Is No Solicitor Where You Work
This is the commonest headache for in-house candidates, charity workers and overseas lawyers. The answer is that the confirming solicitor does not have to be your line manager, and does not have to be employed by the organisation. They do need to be in a position to confirm what you did — either because they had direct experience of your work, or because they have satisfied themselves from someone who did, plus the documentary evidence you provide.
In practice that means a solicitor who supervised the legal team from outside, a firm that acted for your employer, a solicitor who ran the clinic, or a former supervisor who has moved on but still remembers your files. Approach them politely, early, with a tidy evidence pack. Confirmation also touches character and suitability, so the person signing needs to feel comfortable — which is far easier when your records are clean and contemporaneous.
Sequencing QWE Around SQE1 and SQE2
Since the order is free, choose the order that suits your finances and your energy. Two patterns work well. The first: secure a paralegal role, start accruing QWE immediately, and study for FLK1 and FLK2 in the evenings and at weekends. Your day job makes Dispute Resolution, Business Law and Practice and Solicitor Accounts feel concrete rather than abstract, which is worth real marks.
The second: clear SQE1 first, then apply for roles with the assessment behind you. Employers read a completed SQE1 as evidence of commitment, and you go into the job without a revision timetable hanging over you. Neither route is superior. What matters is that the QWE clock is running and being recorded while you study — because the two years is the part you cannot compress, revise for, or sit again in six months.
One practical note on SQE2. The skills assessed — client interviewing, advocacy, case and matter analysis, legal research, and legal writing and drafting — are the same skills your QWE develops daily. Candidates who have taken a genuine client attendance note, or drafted a letter of advice that a partner then tore apart, tend to find the transition to SQE2 far less alien than those coming straight from academic study.
Your Action List for This Week
- Open or check your mySRA account.
- Write down every role, placement, clinic and volunteering stint that might qualify, with dates.
- For each, name the solicitor or compliance officer who could confirm it — and find current contact details now, not in two years.
- Start a one-page weekly competence log for your current role.
- Ask your supervisor for a QWE confirmation covering the period completed so far. Most say yes; very few think to offer.
The candidate from Leeds tracked down her old supervisor on the third attempt, sent through her appraisals and a reconstructed task list, and had both periods confirmed within a fortnight. Recoverable — but she would tell you herself that ten minutes a week would have spared her the panic.
How CELE SQE Can Help
We have supported SQE candidates since the very first sitting in 2021, and we build our timetables around people who are accruing QWE while they study rather than pretending the job does not exist. Our SQE1 courses cover all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 — Long-term at £3,720, Mid-term at £2,750, Short-term at £1,750, with a single-FLK option at half price and £150 off for early bird bookings or those within three months of the exam. If you are further along, the SQE2 course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built 1:1 to the official SRA format; the SQE1 question bank runs at £575 per month. Questions about how your particular work experience fits together? Reach us on WeChat SQE100, at [email protected], or through celebar.com — no pressure, and we are happy to talk through the sequencing before you commit to anything.
