SQE1

SQE1 FLK1: Subjects Tested and How to Revise Them

A subject-by-subject breakdown of FLK1 with revision strategies that actually work for the MCQ format.

FLK1 is one of two Functioning Legal Knowledge sittings in SQE1, and it tests your ability to apply law accurately under time pressure, not to write essays or demonstrate nuance. You get 180 minutes for 90 questions. That's two minutes per question, and some will eat more than that, so the ones you know cold need to take less.

What FLK1 Actually Covers

The Solicitors Regulation Authority publishes a subject matter specification. FLK1 covers:

• Business Law and Practice (including business structures, tax, and insolvency)
• Dispute Resolution (civil litigation procedure)
• Contract Law
• Tort Law
• Legal System of England and Wales (sources of law, court structure, human rights)
• Constitutional and Administrative Law (judicial review, rule of law, Parliamentary sovereignty)
• Legal Services (regulation, ethics in a private client context)

FLK2, by contrast, takes property, wills and administration of estates, criminal law, and criminal litigation. Knowing which side a topic sits on matters for focused revision.

One thing candidates often misread: Business Law and Practice carries significant weight. It is not background reading. Tax treatment of partnerships versus companies, the distinction between a director's duties under the Companies Act 2006, share capital maintenance, and wrongful trading under the Insolvency Act 1986 all appear regularly. Don't let the private law subjects crowd it out of your revision schedule.

Business Law and Practice

This subject rewards memorisation of statutory rules more than any other on FLK1. The questions tend to be scenario-based, but the answer usually turns on a specific rule.

For company law, make sure you know:

• The general duties of directors under ss.171-177 Companies Act 2006 (each duty separately; examiners will give you a scenario and ask which duty is engaged)
• The rule in Foss v Harbottle and when the derivative claim exception under Part 11 CA 2006 applies
• Shareholder remedies: unfair prejudice petition under s.994 CA 2006 versus just and equitable winding up under s.122(1)(g) Insolvency Act 1986
• Share transfer restrictions in private companies

For tax, you do not need to be an accountant, but you need to know the basic principles distinguishing income tax from capital gains tax, how corporation tax applies to companies, VAT thresholds, and the tax treatment of sole traders versus partnerships versus companies. The SRA tests these at the level of a newly qualified solicitor advising a small business client, so the questions are applied, not abstract.

Insolvency comes up more than candidates expect. Know the difference between administration, liquidation, and a company voluntary arrangement. Know wrongful trading (s.214 IA 1986) and what the "every step" defence requires.

How to Revise Business Law and Practice

Make a table. Seriously. Three columns: business structure, tax treatment, liability position. Sole trader, partnership, LLP, private limited company. Fill it in from memory, then check. Repeat weekly. The MCQ format loves questions where two answer options describe plausible but wrong tax treatments, and if you haven't drilled the distinctions, both will look correct.

For company law duties, write out each s.171-177 duty in a single sentence and identify one concrete fact pattern that triggers each. If you can't do that from memory after two weeks of revision, you haven't learned them yet.

Dispute Resolution

This is civil litigation procedure under the Civil Procedure Rules 1998. FLK1 tests the procedural rules, not the merits of claims.

Key areas:

• Pre-action protocols and the consequences of non-compliance
• Limitation periods (Limitation Act 1980): six years for contract, three years for personal injury, and the discovery rule in latent damage cases under s.14A
• Track allocation: small claims (up to £10,000), fast track (£10,000-£25,000), intermediate track (introduced by the Civil Procedure (Amendment No.2) Rules 2023, up to £100,000 for simpler cases), multi-track (above £25,000 or complex)
• Part 36 offers: the mechanics and consequences of acceptance and rejection; the penalties that apply if a claimant fails to beat a defendant's Part 36 offer at trial
• Summary judgment under CPR Part 24
• Interim injunctions: the American Cyanamid principles (serious question to be tried, balance of convenience, adequacy of damages)

Limitation is a favourite topic because it requires you to calculate dates and apply the correct period. Practice questions where you're given a date of breach or injury and asked whether a claim is time-barred. Get fast at the arithmetic.

How to Revise Dispute Resolution

The CPR has a logical structure. Learn the procedural sequence: letter of claim, pre-action protocol, issue of proceedings, service, defence, allocation, directions, trial. Once you have the sequence, the rules for each stage are easier to anchor.

Part 36 trips people up because the rules are asymmetric depending on whether it's a claimant's offer or a defendant's offer. Write these out as two separate flowcharts. Don't try to remember them as one rule.

Contract Law

Contract is examined at a level you'll recognise from your LLB, but the MCQ format changes what gets tested. You rarely need to discuss whether something is an offer or an invitation to treat in depth. You need to identify the correct answer quickly.

Focus on:

• Formation: offer, acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations. The postal rule and its exceptions (Holwell Securities v Hughes [1974]).
• Terms: conditions versus warranties versus innominate terms. The consequences of breach of each. The test from Hong Kong Fir Shipping v Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha [1962] for innominate terms.
• Exclusion clauses: incorporation (notice, signature, course of dealing), construction, and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 alongside the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Know which Act applies to B2B versus B2C contracts.
• Misrepresentation: fraudulent, negligent (s.2(1) Misrepresentation Act 1967), and innocent. The remedies differ, and the examiners test this difference directly.
• Discharge and remedies: frustration (the Davis Contractors test), breach, and the rules on remoteness from Hadley v Baxendale (the two limbs).

One thing candidates consistently get wrong: the difference between a misrepresentation claim and a negligent misstatement claim in tort (Hedley Byrne v Heller [1964]). They overlap factually but have different elements and defences. The exam will give you a scenario where both might apply and ask you which cause of action the claimant would rely on, or what the correct remedy is.

How to Revise Contract Law

Exclusion clauses reward a structured approach. For each question, ask: is the clause incorporated? If yes, does it cover the breach on its true construction? If yes, does UCTA 1977 or CRA 2015 strike it out or subject it to a reasonableness test? Practise running that sequence on exam questions until it's automatic.

For misrepresentation, build a comparison table: fraudulent, s.2(1) negligent, innocent. Columns for burden of proof, available remedies, and whether rescission is barred. The table fits on half an A4 page. Look at it every day for a fortnight.

Tort Law

Tort on FLK1 covers negligence, occupiers' liability, nuisance, and the rule in Rylands v Fletcher. It does not go as deep as a full LLB tort course, but the application questions are genuinely tricky.

For negligence, the structure is duty, breach, causation, remoteness, defences. The duty question in novel situations uses the three-stage Caparo test (proximity, foreseeability, fair just and reasonable) from Caparo Industries v Dickman [1990]. The foundational neighbour principle from [Donoghue v Stevenson [1932]](https://www.getcaselaw.com/case-library/7c984837-f0b3-4afc-a73f-3ec96f6e4756) still matters as the conceptual starting point, and you should be comfortable explaining how Caparo developed it.

Causation gives candidates trouble. The but-for test, material contribution (Bonnington Castings v Wardlaw [1956]), material increase in risk (McGhee v NCB [1973]), and the Fairchild exception for mesothelioma. Know when each test applies and why the standard but-for test would produce injustice in those cases.

For *Rylands v Fletcher*, the elements are strict: the defendant brings onto their land something likely to do mischief if it escapes, it does escape, and it causes foreseeable damage of the relevant type. The requirement of "non-natural use" is the element most tested. Cambridge Water Co v Eastern Counties Leather [1994] is worth knowing on this point, since it confirmed that foreseeability of damage is required even under strict liability.

Occupiers' liability is frequently examined because the two Acts (Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 for lawful visitors, Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 for trespassers) are easy to confuse under time pressure. The duty owed to trespassers under the 1984 Act is narrower, and the occupier can discharge it by giving warnings. Know both Acts side by side.

Private nuisance requires an unlawful interference with the claimant's use and enjoyment of land, or physical damage to it. The claimant must have a proprietary interest (Hunter v Canary Wharf [1997]). The locality principle matters for amenity nuisance. For omissions liability in nuisance, the measured duty of care from *Goldman v Hargrave* is the leading authority.

How to Revise Tort Law

Practise the multi-issue negligence question. Tort questions on SQE1 often involve a single scenario with several potential defendants or claimants, and you need to isolate the legally relevant facts for each one. Time yourself. If you're spending more than two and a half minutes on a tort question, you need to speed up your issue-spotting.

For the strict liability torts, write out each element as a numbered list and then write a short fact pattern that satisfies all elements. Then write a variant that fails on one element. This forces you to understand which element is actually doing work in any given question.

Constitutional and Administrative Law

This is lighter in weight than the private law subjects, but the questions are conceptually precise. You need to know:

• The three traditional pillars: Parliamentary sovereignty, rule of law, separation of powers
• Judicial review: grounds (illegality, irrationality in the Wednesbury sense, procedural impropriety from the GCHQ case [1985]), standing, and remedies
• The Human Rights Act 1998: how Convention rights are incorporated, the s.3 interpretive obligation, s.4 declarations of incompatibility, and the difference between ss.6-8 for public authorities
• Devolution at a headline level

The exam is not asking you to write a jurisprudential essay on Parliamentary sovereignty. It's asking you to identify the correct ground of judicial review on given facts, or whether a particular body is a public authority under the HRA 1998.

Legal Services

This subject covers SRA Standards and Regulations, the regulatory framework for legal services, and professional ethics. It appears in both FLK1 and FLK2 in different forms.

For FLK1, focus on:

• The SRA Principles (there are seven)
• The SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors: confidentiality versus disclosure obligations, conflicts of interest (own interest conflicts, client conflict), duties to the court
• Authorisation and reserved legal activities
• The Legal Services Act 2007 framework

Ethics questions are often scenario-based and ask what the solicitor must do, should do, or is permitted to do. These require you to know the rules precisely enough to distinguish between a mandatory obligation and a discretionary one. The word "must" versus "should" in the SRA Codes is not accidental.

Putting Together a Revision Plan

Given seven subjects, the temptation is to spend equal time on each. Don't. Business Law and Practice and the private law subjects (contract, tort) carry the most questions and the most complex application. Weight your time accordingly.

A sensible eight-week plan might look like:

1. Weeks 1-2: Contract law (complete the subject, test with MCQs daily)
2. Weeks 3-4: Tort law (same approach)
3. Week 5: Business Law and Practice, company law focus
4. Week 6: Business Law and Practice, tax and insolvency
5. Week 7: Dispute Resolution (intensive procedural drill)
6. Week 8: Public law, legal services, and full mixed-paper practice

From week three onwards, do at least 10 mixed MCQs every day, not just questions from whatever subject you're studying. The exam doesn't separate subjects, so your brain needs to switch between contract rules and tort rules and procedural rules without a warmup.

The most effective single revision tool for SQE1 is timed practice on questions that mirror the actual format. Practise with real SQE1 questions on Caselaw to test your application under realistic conditions. Reading notes is not enough. The exam tests recall under pressure, and the only way to build that is repetition.

For equity and trusts topics (which sit in FLK2, not FLK1), the Equity and Trusts topic hub has case-level breakdowns that are worth bookmarking for that side of your revision.