How to Get Your Employer to Fund Your SQE
If you are working towards your SQE and wondering how you are going to pay for it, there is a conversation to be had before you start to panic. Getting your employer to fund your qualification is achievable, and more in-house teams are open to it than you would expect.
The principles are straightforward and you can make a strong business case quite easily. What follows is everything you should need to prepare for the big conversation with your employer.
Start with your position
The easiest scenario is one where you are already working in-house as a paralegal. You know the business, you understand its priorities, and your employer already knows what they are getting with you. That existing relationship is your biggest asset. If your role can be signed off as QWE at the same time, you are also building your two years while you study, which makes the conversation even easier. Starting off as a paralegal makes it much easier for you to present a clear, practical arrangement that benefits both sides, opposed to going in with something abstract.
If you do not have a paralegal role yet, getting one before approaching the SQE funding conversation is worth considering. It puts you in a far stronger position than approaching a business cold, and it gives you something concrete to point to when you make your case.
Build your business case
A request for SQE funding is not a favour. Do not undersell yourself when you make a business proposal.
Your business case should cover the following:
The cost of your training versus the cost of external lawyers.
Work out what your employer currently spends on external legal advice. Then put the cost of SQE preparation and exam fees next to it. The numbers will usually speak for themselves. A qualified in-house lawyer reduces reliance on external counsel significantly. That saving alone often dwarfs the cost of funding your qualification.
The cost of losing you versus the cost of keeping you.
Recruitment is expensive. If you leave to qualify elsewhere, your employer will spend time and money replacing you, onboarding someone new and getting them up to speed. Retaining someone who already knows the business, the stakeholders and the legal team’s ways of working is worth quantifying.
Your contribution so far.
What have you delivered? What have you taken on? What would the team lose if you left? A strong business case includes evidence of your value, not just a projection of your future one.
Return on investment.
Make it easy for your employer to see what they get back. A qualified solicitor on the team. Reduced external legal spend. Continuity of knowledge. A loyal, invested member of the legal function who has every reason to stay.
Don’t forget study leave
This one gets missed more often than it should, and leaving it out signals that you have not thought things through properly. The SQE involves two sets of exams and sitting them properly requires preparation time. Build study leave into your proposal from the start. Be specific about what you are asking for and when. Show that you have mapped it around the business’s needs where possible. Raising it upfront shows that you are serious, organised and considerate of the business’s position. Do not let it be an afterthought.
How to have the conversation
Pick your moment. Do not raise it when your manager is under pressure or in the middle of a busy period. Ask for a dedicated meeting, frame it as wanting to talk about your development, and come prepared with a written summary they can take away and consider.
Be confident but not entitled. You are making a case, not making a demand. Acknowledge that it is an investment and show that you understand what you are asking for. Then make it impossible to say no by demonstrating the return.
If the answer is no straight away, ask what would need to change for it to be a yes. Sometimes it is a timing issue. Sometimes it is budget. Sometimes it is a question of proving yourself for another six months first. Knowing what the barrier is gives you something to work towards.
Over to you..
Employer-funded qualification is not a perk reserved for people at big firms with formal schemes. In-house teams fund this more often than you would think, because it works for them too. The case just needs to be made well. Know your numbers, know your value, and just ask.