How Long Does It Take to Get QWE Signed Off?

Once candidates decide to get their Qualifying Work Experience confirmed, the next question is almost always about time. The honest answer is that the confirmation itself is quick. What takes time is assembling the record and the evidence, and that is largely within your control.

This guide gives the actual timings, stage by stage, and explains what causes delay.

The Short Answer

• Initial assessment: within 24 hours. Submit the short form and we will tell you whether your experience is likely to qualify and which competences it supports.
• Completing your training record: usually one to three weeks. This is your work, at your pace.
• Our review of your record and evidence: a few days. If something needs strengthening we come back with specific queries, at no extra charge.
• The formal confirmation: within 24 hours of payment clearing. Once everything is in place, the confirmation is actioned on mySRA.

For a well-prepared single placement, the whole thing can be done in a couple of weeks. Nothing in the process has a fixed waiting period built into it.

What the Process Actually Involves

1. Assessment. Your experience is reviewed against the Statement of Solicitor Competence, so you know where you stand before investing any time.
2. Your training record. You complete the SRA's record with a guide tailored to your role, showing how work like yours maps to the competences.
3. Evidence. You put together supporting material covering each competence you are claiming.
4. Review. The confirming solicitor reviews the record and evidence, and raises any queries.
5. Corroboration. A short factual statement from someone who genuinely oversaw or reviewed your work.
6. Confirmation. The solicitor confirms your QWE through mySRA.

Only steps two, three and five involve waiting on anything, and the first two of those are yours.

You Set the Pace, Not a Third Party

In most descriptions of external QWE confirmation, the slow step is somebody chasing your supervisor. That is not how this works.

Nothing goes to your employer without your say-so. By default the corroboration element is arranged through you, on your timetable, and we provide the exact wording so nothing has to be drafted from scratch or clarified by correspondence. Because it is short, factual and written, it does not require anyone to schedule a call or take on a role they are unfamiliar with. If you would rather we made the approach ourselves, we are happy to do that instead.

Either way the point is the same for the timeline: the pace is set by you, and nothing sits waiting on an unexpected approach to someone who was not expecting it.

What Actually Causes Delay

• Evidence that does not cover every competence. The most common cause of a second round. The evidence needs to support each competence you have claimed, not act as a general sample. One document often covers several competences at once, which makes this easier than it sounds, but a record claiming twelve competences with three documents behind it will come back with queries.
• Leaving an old placement too long. People move on. Confirming a completed placement while the people who oversaw it are still contactable is far quicker than reconstructing it years later.
• Unredacted material. Evidence has to have client identities and confidential details removed before it is sent, and doing that at the last minute adds a step.
• Genuinely borderline cases. Where it is not obvious that work amounts to the provision of legal services, or where a mixed role needs its hours worked out, careful assessment takes longer than a straightforward case. That is time well spent: a confirmation is a personal professional act and it has to be defensible.

You Do Not Have to Wait for the Full Two Years

This is the single most useful thing to know about timing.

The requirement is two years of full-time equivalent experience across up to four organisations, but you do not have to reach it before dealing with any of it. Placements can be confirmed one at a time as you complete them, and you can return for the rest later. There is no time limit on when QWE was gained, so earlier roles can be confirmed retrospectively.

Candidates who wait until the end tend to be the ones who run into difficulty, because by then supervisors have moved on and the detail of the work has faded.

What It Costs, and When

Pricing is based on the number of competences being confirmed, not the number of placements or hours:

• 2 to 3 competences: £250
• 4 to 6 competences: £400
• 7 or more competences: £500

There is no upfront payment and no consultation fee. Nothing is payable until your evidence has been reviewed and you have been told the outcome, and the confirmation follows within 24 hours of payment clearing.

What to Do Now

The fastest way to get a clear answer on your own timeline is the free assessment. Tell us about your work using our short form and we will respond within 24 hours with whether your experience is likely to qualify and what confirmation would involve, with no obligation and no payment.