Practising law abroad does count as SRA qualifying work experience — but only a solicitor of England and Wales can sign it off

Legal work you did outside England and Wales can count towards the two years of qualifying work experience the SQE route requires. The SRA says so in three separate places. What it will not do is accept confirmation of that work from your overseas supervisor, however senior, unless that person happens to be a solicitor of England and Wales or a Compliance Officer for Legal Practice the SRA regulates.

That is the whole problem, and almost nothing published on it says so plainly. The eligibility of the work is not in doubt. The availability of a signature is.

What the SRA actually says about overseas experience

From the SRA’s guidance for candidates:

“QWE can be gained in England or Wales or overseas, and it does not need to cover English and Welsh law. A candidate will need knowledge of this to take the SQE assessment, but they do not need to gain this specifically through their work experience.”

Its guidance written for confirming solicitors puts the same point in a list of what QWE is: “It may be obtained in England or Wales or overseas,” and “It can be obtained in an organisation we do regulate or in an organisation we do not regulate.”

The underlying rule, Regulation 2.1 of the SRA Authorisation of Individuals Regulations, contains no geographical limit at all. Qualifying work experience must:

“(a) comprise experience of providing legal services which provides you the opportunity to develop the prescribed competences for solicitors; (b) be of a duration of a total of at least two years’ full time or equivalent; and (c) be carried out under an arrangement or employment with no more than four separate firms, educational institutions or other organisations.”

Three conditions. None of them is about where you were sitting.

The four tests the work itself has to pass

Taken from the SRA’s own checklist for candidates:

• It must be providing legal services. The SRA points to the definition of legal activity in section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007. “If someone works in a law firm, in-house legal team or other legal services provider in a role that doesn’t meet this definition, it’s unlikely to be QWE.”
• It must be real, not simulated. “Simulated legal services also do not count – it must be real life experience.”
• It must expose you to at least two competences from the SRA’s Statement of Solicitor Competence. The SRA is explicit that the minimum is two, not all of them, and that “A role that involves only a single competence, even though it may be providing legal services, will not count as QWE.”
• It must fit inside four organisations. There is no minimum or maximum length for any one placement — the SRA’s guidance for confirmers says so directly.

The SRA also refuses to rule on individual cases in advance: “We will not advise as to whether an individual’s situation is QWE.” You apply the checklist yourself and the confirmer signs.

The rule that actually decides this

Regulation 2.2 sets out who may confirm each period, in a strict order:

“(a) the organisation’s COLP; (b) a solicitor working within the organisation; or if neither (a) or (b) are applicable, a solicitor working outside of the organisation who has direct experience of your work and who has: (I) undertaken a review of the work you have done during the relevant period of work experience, which may include review of a training diary or portfolio of work; and (II) received feedback from the person or persons supervising your work.”

The SRA’s guidance page removes any ambiguity about which profession is meant:

“It cannot be a barrister of England and Wales unless they are also a solicitor or COLP we regulate. It also cannot be a different type of qualified lawyer (either UK or international), again unless they are also a solicitor.”

And its page on recording QWE says the same in operational terms: “We cannot accept confirmation from any another qualified lawyer or barrister unless they are also a solicitor or COLP we regulate.” The mySRA form asks for the “name and SRA number of the solicitor or COLP confirming your QWE” — a number that only exists for people on the SRA’s own records.

So the confirmer does not need a practising certificate (the SRA states this twice). The confirmer does not need to work at your organisation. The confirmer does not need to have supervised you directly — the guidance says direct supervision “is not a requirement of confirming QWE”. But the confirmer does have to be a solicitor of England and Wales, or a COLP of a firm the SRA regulates. There is no substitute.

What this means for three common situations

You worked as a paralegal or in-house counsel at an overseas office of an English or Welsh firm. This is the easy case. There is very likely an English-qualified solicitor in the network who has reviewed your work, and the firm may have a COLP. Ask early, while the people who remember you are still there.

You worked at a domestic firm in your own country with no English-qualified lawyer in it. Regulation 2.2 pushes you to limb (c): an outside solicitor of England and Wales with direct experience of your work, who reviews it and takes feedback from the people who supervised you. That person has to exist and has to be willing. Nothing in the SRA’s rules manufactures one for you, and the SRA will not find one. If you are still in that role, the practical move is to build the relationship — and the paper trail — now rather than at the point of admission.

You are already admitted as a lawyer somewhere. Then this article is not your problem. The SRA’s qualified-lawyer page states: “Unlike other SQE candidates, qualified lawyers do not need two years’ qualifying work experience.” Its guidance for employers repeats it: “Qualifying work experience does not apply to UK or overseas qualified lawyers also looking to qualify as a solicitor of England and Wales.” QWE is the route for people whose overseas legal work did not come with admission.

What the confirmer is signing, and what they are not

This matters because overseas supervisors and English-qualified outsiders alike routinely refuse out of a misunderstanding of the liability. Regulation 2.3 limits the confirmation to three things:

“(a) details of the period of work experience carried out; (b) that it provided you with the opportunity to develop some or all of the prescribed competences for solicitors; and (c) that no issues arose during the period of work experience that raise a question as to your character and suitability to be admitted as a solicitor, or if such confirmation cannot be given, then details of any such issues.”

The SRA’s guidance then says the quiet part out loud, twice. “Confirming QWE does not involve deciding whether an individual is competent and suitable to practise. Competence is determined by passing the SQE assessments rather than by a confirming solicitor at the end of a period of QWE.” And: “confirming QWE does not involve judging how well a candidate has been trained, the quality of their experience or the standard of their work.”

If your prospective confirmer thinks they are vouching for your competence, they are reading the form wrong, and the SRA’s guidance page is the document to send them.

The evidence an outside solicitor is expected to have looked at

The SRA lists how a confirmer can satisfy themselves. For someone outside the organisation the list is tighter:

“If you are a solicitor working outside of the organisation where the placement took place you must have direct experience of the candidate’s work and, before confirming QWE, have: Reviewed the individual’s work during the relevant period of work experience. You can do this by reviewing the trainees training diary or portfolio. Received feedback from the person or persons supervising their work.”

For confirmers generally it also suggests “Reviewing the individual’s QWE training template, training diary, learning and development record or work portfolio”, “Confirming with your organisation’s HR team that the placement details are accurate”, and “Speaking to the person or persons directly supervising the individual’s work.”

Read that as a document list. If your overseas employer will not survive a request for HR confirmation of dates and duties in three years’ time, collect it while you are there. The SRA publishes a training template for exactly this, and is clear that using it is optional: “It is not a regulatory requirement to use our template - this is a training and recording aid only.”

Claiming it years later

The SRA permits retrospective claims without any cut-off: “QWE can be claimed retrospectively for a past job, placement or volunteer role. There is no limit on how far back someone can claim it so long as it counts as QWE.”

It also states the realistic failure mode. Solicitors and COLPs are expected to “take reasonable and appropriate steps to confirm any retrospective requests”, but the SRA accepts that it “may be legitimate” not to confirm where “records have not been kept”, “the retrospective claim goes beyond the organisation’s data retention period”, or “there are no individuals from that time still employed who can verify the experience.”

For overseas experience those three failure modes are the norm, not the exception. Time is the risk, not eligibility.

If confirmation is refused

The SRA has a published position, and it is narrower than people hope. It expects confirmers “to act honestly, fairly at all times and not to abuse their position by taking unfair advantage” — giving the example that they “should not refuse to confirm it because they may not want to employ you as a solicitor once you have qualified”, and stating that refusing to confirm qualifying QWE “simply in order to retain an employee in a non-qualified position would be a clear breach of our Principles and Code.”

But it also says: “We will not mediate in a dispute about confirming QWE between you and your employer.” Its Professional Ethics team gives guidance to firms and may remind a solicitor of their obligations, only with your consent, and only after you have tried to resolve it yourself. It does not substitute its own confirmation for theirs.

Note also that this leverage is regulatory leverage over people the SRA regulates. An overseas firm with no SRA-regulated individual in it is outside that reach entirely.

Timing

You only have to register QWE “by the time you apply for admission as a solicitor”, and each of the up to four organisations is a separate application. Each period must have ended — “you must enter an end date. This date cannot be in the future or left blank.” You can gain QWE “before, during or after you sit the SQE assessments.”

What we could not verify

Anything about individual eligibility. The SRA states directly that it “will not advise as to whether an individual’s situation is QWE”. Neither will we, and no third party’s opinion on your particular overseas role is worth anything at the point of admission — only the confirmer’s signature and the SRA’s own view are.

The current SQE assessment fees and sitting dates. The SRA’s assessment site sits behind a bot-protection layer that refused our requests, as it did when we looked at SQE exemptions. We publish no figures for those here.

What to do

1. Do not assume the work is the problem. The SRA’s own words are that QWE “can be gained in England or Wales or overseas, and it does not need to cover English and Welsh law.”
2. Identify the confirmer before you identify anything else. COLP, or an internal solicitor of England and Wales, or — only if neither exists — an external solicitor of England and Wales with direct experience of your work. No other lawyer qualifies.
3. If you are still in the role, build the record now. Training diary or portfolio, HR-confirmable dates and duties, and a named supervisor whose feedback the eventual confirmer can take.
4. Map two competences, not all of them. Two is the regulatory minimum and the SRA says so.
5. Check whether you need QWE at all. If you are already admitted in another jurisdiction, the SRA says qualified lawyers do not need it.

We do not confirm qualifying work experience and we cannot tell you whether yours will be accepted. That decision belongs to a confirming solicitor or COLP under Regulation 2, and to the SRA at admission. What this page does is show you which of the two obstacles you actually face — and it is almost never the one people prepare for.