How do employers view the SQE?

If you're worried that qualifying via the SQE somehow counts for less than the old LPC route, the picture is broadly reassuring, though not entirely uniform. The SQE has been the default route to qualifying as a solicitor of England and Wales since September 2021, and firms have had years to adjust recruitment around it. For nearly everyone applying now, there isn't an LPC alternative sitting on the table to be judged against, which makes the comparison less live than it might feel from the outside.

That doesn't mean the question is silly, though. Big changes to a profession's entry route always generate some noise. This post looks at what's actually known about firm attitudes to the SQE, how sponsorship behaviour has held up, and what signals matter more to employers than which exam route sits on your CV.

The short answer

• Once you're admitted as a solicitor, SQE and LPC graduates hold the same qualification and sit on the same public register without a formal "lesser route" label attached.
• Most firms that used to sponsor candidates through the LPC now sponsor the same way through the SQE, funding prep courses and assessment fees as part of training contract and graduate scheme offers.
• The SRA's own 2025 evaluation found employer confidence in the SQE has risen since 2022, though a separate 2025 survey of graduate recruiters found some firms still rate SQE trainees behind LPC trainees on specific early-career skills.
• What firms scrutinise at interview and application stage hasn't changed much: your work experience, your reasoning, your commercial awareness, your performance in assessment centres. The exam route is rarely the differentiator.

Why the "does the SQE count" question keeps coming up

Some of the anxiety here is understandable. The SQE was a genuinely large structural change: a single, centrally set assessment replacing a taught, provider-run course, and qualifying work experience (QWE) replacing the traditional two-year training contract. Any time a profession changes its entry test, people entering under the new system reasonably wonder if they'll be seen as a lesser version of what came before.

There was also a natural lag early on, with some job postings still referring loosely to "training contracts" out of habit even where the underlying arrangement was really QWE. That's terminology drift more than a sign firms distrust the qualification. Firms that recruit trainee solicitors have built their graduate schemes and sponsorship packages around the SQE as the standard route, simply because that's what the overwhelming majority of applicants are on.

What sponsorship behaviour actually tells you

Sponsorship is one of the clearest signals of how seriously firms take a qualification route, because firms don't spend recruitment budget on something they think is a weak credential. Most law firms that previously funded candidates through the LPC now fund the equivalent SQE path: prep course fees, SRA assessment fees, and often a maintenance grant, bundled into a training contract or graduate scheme offer.

The mechanics are broadly the same as under the LPC. A firm makes an offer, funding is tied to it, and in exchange you typically commit to joining the firm for a minimum period after qualifying. That continuity is a useful signal: firms didn't retreat from funding qualification when the route changed, they redirected the same funding model at the new exam structure. We've covered how that funding typically works in which law firms fund your SQE.

There is now published survey evidence on this, and it's mixed rather than uniformly reassuring. The SRA's own independent evaluation, carried out by IFF Research and covering more than 2,000 stakeholders, found that employer confidence in the SQE rose from an average score of 2.9 in 2022 to 3.4 in 2025 on a five-point scale, even as candidate confidence fell over the same period. Separately, a 2025 Legal Cheek survey of around 40 graduate recruitment and learning-and-development professionals at City, national and US firms found more critical views on specific skills: few respondents rated SQE trainees ahead of LPC trainees on legal knowledge, drafting or research, though SQE trainees were seen as coping better with the transition into a training contract. Read together, firms appear increasingly confident in the SQE as a qualification route overall, while some recruiters still flag skills gaps in the graduates it produces early on. Sponsorship behaviour is a further, separate signal worth weighing alongside the survey data: offers exist, they're structured the way they always were, and they're tied to the SQE because that's the qualification route on offer now.

Where employer expectations genuinely differ from the old system

It would be misleading to say nothing changed. A couple of things shape how firms evaluate candidates differently, even if none of it amounts to firms doubting the qualification itself.

Conversion courses are no longer an SRA requirement, but most firms still expect one from non-law graduates in practice. The reported norm among graduate recruiters is still to expect a conversion course (commonly the PGDL) from candidates without a qualifying law degree. If that applies to you, it's worth reading do you still need the PGDL before the SQE before assuming you can skip it.

QWE is also more flexible than a training contract, which shifts what firms check for. Because it can be built across up to four organisations rather than one fixed placement, some firms now look more closely at whether your experience is varied and well-documented, since it's less standardised than the old single-employer training contract used to be. Neither of these points suggests the SQE is viewed as inferior. They're firms adjusting process around a newer system, the way any institution takes time to bed in a changed entry route.

What firms actually weigh most

If you're choosing where to put your energy, it's worth being clear-eyed about what recruiters are actually assessing, because it isn't primarily "which exam did you sit."

1. Work experience and QWE quality. Firms care about what you did and can demonstrate from it, not just that you accumulated the hours. Well-documented, varied QWE tends to stand out more than QWE logged at one organisation with little variety.
2. Application and assessment centre performance. Commercial awareness, written reasoning, and how you handle assessment exercises remain the core filters they've always been, regardless of exam route.
3. SQE1 and SQE2 results, where relevant. Some firms want to see you've passed, or are on track to, particularly for direct-qualification hires rather than offers made before you sit the exams.
4. Fit and motivation. Same as it's always been. Firms hiring trainees are backing a person for several years, not just a transcript.

None of this is unique to the SQE era. It's largely the same list firms used to assess LPC candidates against. The exam route sits underneath all of it, not on top.

Practical takeaways

If the underlying worry is "will qualifying via the SQE hold me back," the more useful question is whether your QWE, applications and exam performance are strong, since those are what firms actually look at closely. A free SQE study planner can help you keep QWE, SQE1 prep and SQE2 prep mapped against real dates, which matters more for how you come across at interview than which exam system you're sitting.

It's also worth checking the current SQE dates for 2026 and 2027 if you're timing an application around a sitting, and looking at how SQE cohort pass rates break down for a realistic sense of where you sit relative to other candidates, rather than relying on anecdote.

Frequently asked questions

Do employers respect the SQE? The available evidence points mostly to yes. Firms have kept sponsoring candidates through it in broadly the same way they sponsored the LPC, and the SRA's own IFF Research evaluation found employer confidence in the SQE rising from 2022 to 2025. That said, a separate 2025 Legal Cheek survey of graduate recruiters found some firms still rate SQE trainees behind LPC trainees on specific skills like drafting and research, so "respect" isn't uniform across every measure.

Is the SQE seen as easier or lower status than the LPC? Not on the qualification's status itself: SQE1 and SQE2 are set and marked externally by the SRA rather than by individual course providers, which if anything standardises outcomes across candidates. On specific early-career skills, though, some recruiters surveyed by Legal Cheek in 2025 rated SQE trainees behind LPC trainees on legal knowledge, drafting and research. Difficulty and status are separate questions from those skills comparisons, and none of them are the same as pass rates.

Do law firms still ask which route I qualified through? For new candidates it's rarely relevant, since almost everyone currently applying is on the SQE route by default. It mainly comes up for the shrinking pool of candidates completing LPC transitional arrangements.

Does my choice of SQE prep provider affect how employers see me? There's no evidence employers rank candidates by which prep provider they used. What matters more is your results, your QWE, and your performance in the application process. If a firm is sponsoring you, they'll usually specify the provider they fund anyway.

Will QWE be taken as seriously as a traditional training contract? Firms with structured graduate schemes tend to offer something that functions like a training contract in practice, even though it's formally QWE. Where QWE is pieced together from multiple employers, the main thing firms weigh is how well documented and varied the experience is, not whether it came from a single fixed placement.