SQE2 exemptions for foreign-qualified lawyers: who qualifies, and how to evidence it
If you are already a qualified lawyer somewhere else, you may not have to sit SQE2. That possibility is worth taking seriously, and it is also worth approaching carefully, because the part people underestimate is not whether they qualify. It is proving it.
Who can apply
Exemptions are open to qualified lawyers. The SRA means someone holding a professional legal qualification that confers rights to practise, whether in England and Wales, elsewhere in the United Kingdom, or in another jurisdiction.
This is the first place applications fail. A law degree, however strong, is not a professional qualification conferring rights to practise. Neither is an LL.M. If what you hold is academic, the qualified-lawyer route is not open to you and the standard route applies instead.
Two routes, and they are not interchangeable
There are two ways an exemption can arrive.
An agreed exemption applies where the SRA has already compared a particular qualification or jurisdiction against what the SQE assesses and accepted that it meets the standard. The comparison has been done centrally, so your task is narrower: establish that you genuinely hold that qualification.
An individual assessment exemption is decided on your own facts. It is the heavier route, and it is where the evidence burden sits.
Two lawyers from the same country can be on different routes, because the route follows the qualification rather than the nationality.
What the evidence has to do
The question is not how impressive your career has been. It is whether your qualification and experience match the content and standard of the assessment you want to skip. That is a mapping exercise, and the burden of showing the match is entirely yours.
In practice that means demonstrating your skills against the competence standard the SRA publishes, supported by material a stranger can check: work samples, appropriately redacted, and references from supervisors that corroborate the experience you are relying on rather than simply praising you.
“I have twelve years in commercial litigation” is an assertion. A redacted attendance note and a supervisor who confirms you drafted it are evidence.
Two things that end an application early
You cannot apply for an exemption from an assessment you have failed, or one you are awaiting results for. A failure is treated as evidence that the standard has not been met, so that assessment has to be resat and passed.
And an incomplete application does not start the clock. The SRA’s published timescale runs from receipt of a complete application, so a bundle missing its corroboration is not merely weaker, it is slower.
Who decides
The SRA, and only the SRA. It decides whether a candidate is exempt and which part of the SQE, if any, an exemption covers. No adviser, tutor or agent can grant one or influence the outcome, and anyone suggesting otherwise is telling you something that is not true.
What an adviser can usefully do is tell you early whether an application is realistic, work out which route applies to you, and make sure the evidence actually addresses what is being asked.
The current criteria, forms and timescales are on the SRA’s own site at sra.org.uk, and you should check them there before you act on anything you read here, including this article.