Over the past few years I have watched a remarkable thing happen: Ukrainian lawyers, many of whom never planned to leave home, rebuilding serious legal careers in England and Wales. If that is you, or you are thinking about it, I want to say something first that has nothing to do with exams. It is doable, and you are not doing it alone.
Now the practical side.
The route is more open than it looks
The SQE deliberately removed the old bottleneck, the training contract. In its place is Qualifying Work Experience, which you can gather across different roles and organisations. For lawyers rebuilding from a disrupted career, that flexibility is exactly what you need. And if you are already qualified, you may be exempt from part of the assessment.
The honest hurdles
Two things take real work. The first is the move from a civil law tradition to common law reasoning, which is what SQE1 quietly tests through its question style. The second, and the one people underestimate, is legal English. Conversational English is not the problem; it is the specific language of English practice. Both are learnable with the right structure, and neither should stop you.
Why the community matters
Preparing for a hard exam in a second language, in a new country, is lonely in a way that quietly wrecks momentum. That is the honest reason our Ukrainian SQE study group exists. It pairs proper SQE preparation with people who share your starting point and mentors who have made this exact journey, so the hardest days are shared rather than survived alone.
On the mechanics, start with our free SQE Planner to turn a vague intention into a week-by-week plan you can actually follow.
One thing candidates ask me
Do I need to throw away my Ukrainian legal training?
No. Your qualifications and experience count towards the requirements and may support an exemption. You are adapting a career, not deleting one.
If you have been quietly wondering whether this is possible for you, take that as your answer. Come and see how the SQE courses and the study group work.
— Dr Olga Pogrebennyk
Related reading: SQE for French lawyers and SQE for Indian lawyers.