Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate jurisdictions with separate regulators — and neither of them runs the SQE

There is no such thing as a UK-qualified solicitor. There are solicitors of England and Wales, solicitors of Scotland, and solicitors of Northern Ireland, each admitted by a different body under different rules. The SQE and its exemption list belong only to the first of those three. Neither of the other two runs it, references it, or grants anything on the strength of it.

For an overseas-qualified lawyer the two alternatives are not variants of the same thing. Scotland publishes a complete, priced, examined transfer route. Northern Ireland publishes, for foreign qualified lawyers, an enquiry form.

Scotland: one assessment, eleven exams

The Law Society of Scotland’s position is short: “Any lawyer wishing to requalify as a Scottish solicitor must apply to undertake our Qualified Lawyers Assessment.”

Before you can sit anything you need a Certificate of Eligibility, which “certifies that you are a fit and proper person to sit the Qualified Lawyers Assessment.”

Step	What the Society publishes
Certificate of Eligibility fee	£615
Disclosure Scotland (Level 2) fee	£25, paid to Disclosure Scotland directly
Time to issue the certificate	“within six weeks from the date that a fully completed application is received”
When to apply	“four months before the date of the first examination… you intend to sit”
Certificate validity	one year from issue to commence your first exam; after that “we require a fresh Certificate of Good Standing”
QLA exam enrolment fee	£120 per exam, and “If a resit is required, another enrolment fee must be paid”
Enrolment deadline	“no later than six weeks prior to the date of an exam”
Time to apply for admission after passing	five years, under Regulation 16(4) of the Admission as Solicitor (Scotland) Regulations 2019

The supporting evidence list is equally concrete: a Certificate of Good Standing from your home Bar Association, a recent photograph, a copy or abbreviated birth certificate, photographic ID, proof of current home address, and any exemption applications. Everything goes by email to the Society’s exams address.

Note the Disclosure requirement, which trips people up: “You can only apply for a Level 2 certificate through the Law Society of Scotland. Do not apply for a Level 1 Disclosure Scotland certificate directly - this is different. If you pay for a Level 1 certificate, you will have to pay for second Level 2 certificate, in addition.” Since 1 April 2025 the Society starts the application for you and Disclosure Scotland emails you a link.

The eleven exams

Candidates must pass, and “may sit the exams in any order that they choose”: Legal system and legal method, Public Law, Obligations, Criminal Law, Evidence, Procedure, Conveyancing, Trusts and Succession, European Law and Institutions, Professional Conduct, The Accounts Rules.

Two structural facts about the assessment, in the Society’s own words:

“The Law Society does not provide any tuition or teaching/learning materials for the QLA.”

and, from its FAQs, “The QLA is solely independent study. There are no classes, seminars or study materials.” A syllabus, a reading list and past papers exist; a course does not. If you are comparing this against England and Wales on cost, the absence of a prescribed course is a saving on one side of the ledger and a risk on the other, and the Society does not pretend otherwise.

Timetable. Two diets a year, May and November. From the November 2026 diet the exams move from remote to in person, at “two or three city locations in Scotland… likely to be Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and possibly Glasgow”, with the Society stating it is “currently finalising the exact locations”. That is a real logistical change for anyone outside the UK and it is published now, not retrospectively.

Attempt limits. First exam within 12 months of the Certificate of Eligibility date; then “four consecutive exam diets to sit each exam at least once”, which the Society summarises as attempting every exam at least once within two years; then “three attempts to pass each QLA exam”. Missing an exam you enrolled for without seven days’ notice or reasonable cause “will be treated as having failed the exam.”

The exemptions, and the number nobody else publishes

Some exemptions are automatic. The Society calls them exemptions “by right” and says they “will automatically be granted and do not require a separate application”:

• Solicitors and barristers of England and Wales, solicitors and barristers of Northern Ireland, Irish solicitors and barristers, and solicitors and advocates of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are exempt from public law, obligations, European law and institutions, and professional conduct — four of the eleven.
• Lawyers qualified in non-UK EEA jurisdictions or Switzerland are exempt from European law and institutions only.
• Lawyers qualified in other common law jurisdictions get a format concession rather than an exemption: they “have the option to answer any three questions in the examination in legal system and legal method”, where non-common-law candidates must answer three of which one is compulsory.

Every other exemption is discretionary, applied for at the same time as the Certificate of Eligibility, and the Society publishes its own refusal rate:

“Around two thirds of all exemption applications are refused.”

Its 2023 table shows 56 applications, 39% approved and 61% refused, with Criminal Law at 18% approved and Public Law the most generous at 71%. It also states there is “no right to have your application reconsidered where you disagree with the examiner’s assessment” — only a challenge that the Society did not follow its own guidelines.

The benchmark it applies explains the numbers:

“Even the most experienced of foreign qualified lawyers will be required to sit the Society’s QLA exams, if they cannot show that their prior qualifications and/or experience matches the Scots law syllabus being examined.”

Prior experience in your own jurisdiction, however long, is not the test. Scots law content is.

Two Scottish answers worth quoting exactly

On whether you must requalify at all, the Society states the criminal-law position first and the exception second, and both halves belong together:

“Only those who have been admitted as a solicitor in Scotland and hold current practising certificate can call themselves by the title ‘solicitor’. It is a criminal offence to act as a solicitor, or to pretend or imply that you are one. Certain limited areas of law are also reserved to solicitors in Scotland. However, foreign lawyers can advise on the law of their home jurisdiction in Scotland and in areas of international law, without having to requalify.”

On the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, which fully qualified foreign lawyers frequently assume they must buy: “If you are already fully qualified in your home jurisdiction, you do not need to complete a Diploma in Professional Legal Practice to requalify in Scotland.”

Northern Ireland: a route that has not been written down

The Law Society of Northern Ireland publishes three pages under “Qualified Solicitor”. Two of them are detailed. The third is the one most overseas lawyers need, and it consists of this:

“If you are a Foreign Qualified Lawyer (FQL) seeking to register with the Society as a student, then you should, in the first instance, submit an enquiry via the online form available below.”

Read the wording. Not “apply for admission” — register with the Society as a student. There is no published Northern Irish equivalent of the QLA or the SQE exemption list. There is no fee, no timetable, no exemption schedule, no evidence list, and no decision window on that page.

Who does have a published transfer route

Qualified Reciprocal Solicitors, meaning individuals admitted as a solicitor in “England and Wales; and/or Republic of Ireland”. Fee £150. Turnaround “at least two months”. Requirements include a Basic AccessNI certificate dated within three months, certificates of good standing from every jurisdiction you have ever been admitted in, a certified admission certificate for each, a chronological work history, and two references from “solicitors within Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland or England and Wales of at least five years standing” who “must not be related to you by birth or marriage and must have known you for a minimum of two years.”

One sentence on that page closes a door that many overseas lawyers have been walking towards:

“Those who hold registered foreign lawyer (RFL) status with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), and who have not been admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales, are not permitted direct entry to the Roll.”

RFL registration is not admission. It does not open Northern Ireland.

Qualified Scottish Solicitors have their own route, currently interrupted: “the Qualified Scottish Solicitor route is closed for applications to commence in 2025. It will reopen for the 2026 cycle soon.” When open, applications close in April, and successful applicants are “usually required to complete” named modules at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies in Belfast — Private Client: Wills, and Property Law and Practice Parts 1 and 2 — plus “a 6-month apprenticeship with a firm of solicitors in Northern Ireland”, which may run concurrently at the Education Committee’s discretion. Fees for this route “are currently under review”.

So what does a foreign qualified lawyer actually do in Northern Ireland

On the Society’s published rules, they enter through the ordinary student routes, which means a two-year traineeship with a Master and the Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Legal Studies at IPLS, awarded by Queen’s University Belfast.

The academic gate is eight named core subjects: Constitutional Law, Law of Tort, Law of Contract, Criminal Law, Equity, European Law, Land Law, Law of Evidence. Applicants who have not been examined in Law of Evidence are told to flag it so that “arrangements can be made for them to sit the appropriate examination.”

If your degree is not a law degree the Society names two courses, and this is the only place in this article where any regulator names a course at all:

“The Masters in Law (MLaw) awarded by Queen’s University Belfast will be accepted as sufficient evidence of the satisfactory level of knowledge of the core subjects.”

“The Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL) awarded by Ulster University is also recognised as meeting the required standard of knowledge in the core subjects.”

The experience-based alternative under Regulation 8(5) of the Solicitors Admission and Training Regulations 1988 is closed: “the Regulation 8(5) route is under review, and we are not currently accepting applications.” The Society also reproduces the Burns judgment on that route, in which the then Lord Chief Justice said “it should require a truly exceptional case to be established before [the Society] should allow registration under Regulation 8(5).”

Society fees for the trainee routes are published as a Petition and Indentures Registration Fee of £187.50 and an Admission Fee of £50.00. Those are the Society’s own fees. IPLS course fees are not on the Society’s pages, and we have not taken them from anywhere else.

The restriction that applies to everyone

Whichever door you come through, Northern Ireland attaches a three-year tail:

“All solicitors who are admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in Northern Ireland are required to serve a three-year period of restricted practice (three full Practising Certificates) under Reg 7(1) of the Solicitors Practice Regulations 1987 (as amended). This applies whether the individual trained in Northern Ireland or transferred from another jurisdiction.”

During it you cannot practise on your own account and must work under the supervision of a solicitor who has held a practising certificate for the previous three years. A waiver exists under Reg 7(2)(a) but “cannot be lodged pre-emptively and so can only be submitted after the individual has been admitted to the Roll.”

Scotland has a comparable restriction in a different form. Its FAQ quotes practice rule D2.1: “you shall not practise as a manager unless you have been employed as a solicitor or European lawyer for a cumulative period of three years, one year of which shall immediately precede your commencing practice as a manager.”

The three jurisdictions side by side

	England and Wales (SRA)	Scotland (Law Society of Scotland)	Northern Ireland (Law Society of NI)
Transfer route for a foreign lawyer	SQE1 plus SQE2 or an SQE2 exemption	Certificate of Eligibility, then the Qualified Lawyers Assessment	None published; an enquiry form and entry as a student of the Society
Published entry fee	see the SRA’s own pages	£615 certificate + £25 disclosure + £120 per exam	£150 for E&W / Republic of Ireland solicitors only
Number of assessments	2 (SQE1, SQE2)	11 exams, minus any exemptions	not applicable
Automatic exemptions for lawyers of the other UK jurisdictions	—	yes, 4 of 11 exams by right	reciprocal admission for E&W and RoI solicitors
Tuition provided by the regulator	no	explicitly none	IPLS Postgraduate Diploma is the vocational stage
Post-admission restriction	—	three years before practising as a manager	three years of restricted practice

What we could not verify

The fee for a discretionary QLA exemption application. The Law Society of Scotland states that “There is a fee associated with making an application (noted on the exemption application form)”. The figure lives on a downloadable form, not on the page, and we did not read it. We publish no number.

Northern Ireland’s requirements for foreign qualified lawyers beyond student registration. They are not published. The Society directs enquiries to a form. Anyone telling you what the Society will ask of you is guessing, and so would we be.

Current IPLS course fees, and the reopened fee schedule for the Qualified Scottish Solicitor route. The NI Society says Scottish-route fees are “under review” and points applicants to IPLS directly. We have not taken figures from third parties.

The exact 2026 in-person QLA exam locations. The Law Society of Scotland says they are being finalised. “Likely to be Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and possibly Glasgow” is its wording, not a confirmation, and we have not upgraded it.

What to do

1. Decide which jurisdiction you are aiming at before you spend anything. These are three separate admissions with three separate regulators; nothing bought for one carries into another.
2. If Scotland: apply for the Certificate of Eligibility about four months before the diet you want, and file every exemption application with it. Exemptions cannot be added later, and roughly two thirds are refused.
3. If you already hold admission in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, check the four exemptions by right before you count exams. They are automatic and reduce the QLA from eleven papers to seven.
4. If Northern Ireland and you are not admitted in England and Wales or the Republic of Ireland, plan for the student route, not a transfer. The academic gate is eight core subjects, and QUB’s MLaw and Ulster’s PGDL are the two courses the Society names as satisfying it.
5. Budget for the three-year restricted-practice tail in Northern Ireland and the three-year manager restriction in Scotland. Admission is not the end of the timeline in either place.
6. If your plan depended on SRA registered foreign lawyer status opening a UK-wide door, it does not. Northern Ireland says so in terms.

We do not assess qualifications, we do not grant exemptions, and we cannot tell you whether either Society will accept yours. Those are decisions for the Law Society of Scotland’s examiners and the Law Society of Northern Ireland’s Education Committee under their own published rules. What this page does is show you that one of these two jurisdictions has written its rules down and the other, for your situation, has not.