Qualifying as a Barrister or Solicitor

UCL Laws equips you with essential legal knowledge and skills, supporting your journey to qualify as a solicitor or barrister and excel in legal practice.

All of our programmes are compliant with the QAA subject benchmark statement for law and contain the "Foundations of Legal Knowledge" subjects as well as the skills associated with graduate legal work such as legal research. 

Solicitor

The Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) introduced a new, independent centralised assessment for all would-be solicitors on 1 September 2021 (the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (‘SQE’)). Students starting a Law degree programme at UCL (and elsewhere) from 2022 will need to undertake the Solicitors’ Qualifying Examination (SQE) to qualify as a solicitor. Your law degree will not exempt you from the SQE assessment, but the foundations of legal knowledge subjects studied on your degree at UCL Laws (criminal law, contract & tort law, property law, public law (including constitutional law, administrative law & human rights), equity & trusts, EU law) will be assessed in the new SQE 1 exam (in addition to other areas of law and practice). In order to qualify as a solicitor after your degree at UCL Laws, you will need to complete:

  • SQE1 on legal knowledge
  • SQE2 on practical legal skills and knowledge
  • Two years' full-time (or equivalent) qualifying work experience
  • Pass the SRAs character and suitability requirements.

You will find further information about the SQE on the SRAs website (link above). For more information you should refer to the SRA website.

Barrister

In order to become a barrister, the requirement to complete the academic component of Bar training will not change. There are four components to training to become a barrister. These are:

  1. the academic stage;
  2. the vocational stage (the Bar Standard Board’s (‘BSB’) says that students must start the vocational component within five years of completion of their law degree); and
  3. the pupillage (work-based learning); and
  4. satisfy the minimum requirements in relation to the activities of the Inns of Court.

The BSB states that undergraduate law degrees must comply with the QAA subject benchmark statement for law and contain the "Foundations of Legal Knowledge" subjects as well as the skills associated with graduate legal work such as legal research. All our undergraduate programme degrees are compliant with this requirement.

For more information, you should refer to the BSB website.