SQE1 explained: FLK1, FLK2, and what the assessment actually tests

SQE1 tests Functioning Legal Knowledge. The name is doing more work than it looks. The assessment is not asking whether you have read about a topic. It is asking whether you can apply the rule to a set of facts, quickly, under time pressure, without prompting.

Two sittings, one body of knowledge

SQE1 is split across two assessments, FLK1 and FLK2. Together they cover the subjects a solicitor is expected to have functioning knowledge of on day one. The split is administrative rather than conceptual: it is one syllabus, sat in two halves.

The practical consequence is that you cannot safely be strong in one half and thin in the other, because each is assessed and you need to get through both.

Single best answer, and why it is harder than it sounds

Questions are single best answer with five options. That format has a specific failure mode. More than one option will often be defensible. You are choosing the best one, which means the distractors are built out of real misunderstandings rather than nonsense.

This is why passive revision underperforms. Re-reading notes builds recognition, and recognition feels like knowledge right up until the moment five plausible options are in front of you and you have to separate them.

The time pressure is part of the assessment

The number of questions and the time allowed are published by the SRA, and the arithmetic gives you a little over a minute and a half per question on average.

That average is the thing to train against. A question you can answer correctly in four minutes is, for assessment purposes, a question you cannot answer. Speed is not a bonus on top of knowing the law; it is part of what is being tested.

What this means for preparation

Three things follow, and they are not equally obvious.

The first is that coverage matters more than depth in any one subject. The assessment samples widely, so a deep hole is more expensive than a shallow one is valuable.

The second is that you should be answering questions from early on, not saving them for the end. Questions are not the test of your revision. They are the revision.

The third is that at least one full-length mock is worth more than its length suggests. Sitting the real duration is a different experience from working in batches, and discovering that on the day is an avoidable way to lose marks.

Always check the current assessment specification, question counts and timings on the SRA’s own site at sra.org.uk, because those details are set by the SRA and can change.