Get Paid to Qualify

The assessments alone cost £5,092. Five routes exist where somebody else pays, and most of them have nothing to do with a City training contract: apprenticeships, firms that fund their own paralegals, councils, secondment providers, and a fund paid for out of regulatory fines.

What is in it

• What the SQE actually costs in 2026
• The apprenticeship route, and the January 2026 change that narrowed it
• Why the apprenticeship level matters more than anything else
• Firms with a named programme for funding their paralegals
• Councils and housing associations, where the competition is thinnest
• The SQE Access and Reinvestment Fund, and the postgraduate loan trap