Solicitor

1What you'd actually do

• Drafting and amending documents — contracts, leases, wills, court filings, employment policies, share purchase agreements — depending on the area of law you work in.
• Researching specific legal questions using subscription legal databases and case law, then writing up the answer as a note or email a non-lawyer client can actually act on.
• Reviewing large volumes of documents on a transaction or dispute (often called due diligence or disclosure) and flagging anything that creates a risk for the client.
• Emailing and calling clients and the other side's lawyers to chase information, explain where things stand, and negotiate points in a document.
• Keeping a record of time spent, usually in six-minute units, so work can be billed — a routine and often disliked part of the job in private practice.
• Attending internal meetings on live matters, and in contentious work, preparing bundles of documents and instructions for a barrister.
• In some areas, meeting clients face to face or attending court, tribunals, completions or client sites.

2How graduates get in

• The most common route: a qualifying law degree (LLB) or any degree plus a law conversion course, then a training contract — a two-year paid period of supervised work at a firm — alongside or after passing the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE). Since the SQE was introduced, the training contract has been replaced in formal terms by 'qualifying work experience' (QWE), but most large firms still recruit onto two-year training contract programmes.
• Applying for a training contract or SQE-funded programme directly, often one to two years before you would start. Large commercial firms recruit far in advance; smaller and regional firms often recruit closer to the start date or when a vacancy arises.
• Vacation schemes — paid one- to three-week placements at a firm, usually in the summer or at Easter. At many larger commercial firms these are the main pipeline for training contracts, so the vacation scheme application is effectively the real application.
• Solicitor apprenticeships (typically around six years from school or college), which do not require a degree first. Growing but still a minority route, and mostly offered by larger firms and some public sector employers.
• Qualifying through work experience without a traditional training contract — the SQE allows QWE to be built up across up to four different placements, including paralegal work, law clinics or in-house roles. This is a genuine route but less structured, and you usually have to fund the SQE yourself.
• Starting as a paralegal (a legal support role that does not require qualification) and moving into a training contract or QWE at the same employer. Common in smaller firms, high street practice and public sector legal teams; less common as a route into large commercial firms.

3What employers ask for

• Your degree subject does not have to be law. Non-law graduates take a conversion course (historically the GDL, now often an SQE preparation course with conversion content) and are recruited in large numbers, particularly by commercial firms.
• Most large firms ask for a 2:1 or above, and many still look at A-level grades. Smaller firms and some public sector employers are more flexible, and many firms operate contextual recruitment that takes your school and background into account.
• Passing both parts of the SQE: SQE1 (multiple-choice exams on legal knowledge) and SQE2 (practical assessments in things as interviewing, advocacy, drafting and legal writing). Some firms fund this and pay a maintenance grant; others expect you to have passed already. This varies enormously.
• Two years' full-time equivalent qualifying work experience, signed off by a qualified solicitor.
• A character and suitability assessment by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (the regulator), which covers things like criminal convictions and financial history.
• Evidence of commercial or client awareness — being able to talk about why a client would care about a legal issue, not just what the law says. Employers probe this heavily at interview, particularly in commercial firms.

4Skills that matter

5Where it leads

1. Trainee (or QWE placement), usually two years, rotating through different practice areas — commonly four six-month 'seats' at larger firms, though smaller firms may use fewer, longer rotations or no formal rotation at all.

2. Newly qualified (NQ) solicitor in a chosen practice area. You take on your own smaller matters with supervision, and pay typically rises sharply at this point in commercial firms.

3. Associate, then senior associate — running matters largely independently, supervising trainees and juniors, and increasingly being expected to bring in or maintain client relationships. Timeframes vary widely by firm and area.

4. Partner or legal director in private practice, which involves ownership or profit-share and responsibility for winning work. This takes many years and not everyone wants it; the timeline is not standard.

5. Alternatives that are very common rather than fallbacks: moving in-house to a company's legal team, into public sector or government legal work, into compliance, risk or company secretarial roles, into legal knowledge or professional support roles, or retraining at the Bar. Many solicitors move sideways at least once.

6Where this varies

The biggest variations are by firm type and funding of qualification. Large commercial and City firms recruit years in advance through vacation schemes, pay for the SQE and a living grant, and offer structured four-seat training — but expect long and unpredictable hours. Regional, high street and legal aid firms recruit later and more informally, often from their own paralegals, may not fund the SQE, and pay considerably less, but usually give earlier direct client contact and more responsibility sooner. In-house legal teams and government legal services (which run their own recruitment) take some trainees directly but more often hire solicitors who have already qualified elsewhere. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems, separate regulators and different qualification routes — the SQE applies to England and Wales only, and if you want to practise in Scotland or Northern Ireland you need to follow those jurisdictions' own routes.