Training contract, apprenticeship, self-fund SQE or paralegal – which route into the profession should I take?

Do not paralegal unless you are 10000% committed to becoming a solicitor and willing to put in potentially years of struggling to get by on minimum wage while your firm dangle the carrot of a TC. I found my firm (national, I was in a regional office) didn’t want to progress me to a TC or the alternative CILEX route on offer. Or not for a good few years anyway. This was not good enough for me as I could not afford to survive on the rubbish wage they were paying. They wanted to keep me as a paralegal for as long as possible as I was doing NQ associate work for 1/3 of the cost.

I have now turned to a career in a different field. Pay is far higher, the work is less stressful, and if I decide I want to work in law eventually, there is nothing stopping me from applying for a direct TC.

So my advice would be to stay where you are and just apply for a direct TC. Firms always say that any experience is good experience, it’s not necessary to paralegal in order to secure a TC and has no guarantees of qualification.

Given you’ve obtained a degree and subsequently done the PGDL you may not be eligible for an Apprenticeship in Law. If you self fund for SQE, you still need to obtain 2 years of Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) to be accepted by the SRA and the QWE can be obtained whilst working as a Paralegal. Some firms will even offer Legal Qualification Sponsorship internally. If you obtain a Training Contract, it’s likely to be offered to start in 2027, should you apply and be successful next year. The question is, if you continue your career further in Law, how quickly do you want to become qualified? My advice would be to obtain a Paralegal position. This way you can at least start to build your QWE should you opt to pursue the SQE qualification route and will give you additional experience that will be relevant to your future career.