SQE1 FLK1 Subjects and Weighting: The Blueprint in Questions

FLK1, the first of the two SQE1 papers, covers six subject areas, and the SRA does not weight them by a fixed number of questions. It publishes a percentage range for each: 14–20% of the paper for Business Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution, Contract Law, Tort and Legal System, and 12–16% for Legal Services. Ethics has no slice of its own; it runs through all six. This guide quotes the ranges from the SQE1 Assessment Specification, turns them into questions for a 170-question paper (our arithmetic, labelled), sets out what each subject area contains, and lists the format rules that sit beside the weighting: five options, closed book, and the law cut-off date. Every SQE and SRA page cited here was read on 14 October 2026, as the live page stood that day. ProSyllabus is an independent study site. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) or Kaplan, which delivers the SQE for the SRA; every rule below is quoted or summarised from their published pages, and the SRA decides every application.

SQE1 Assessment Specification, Annex 4 (Functioning Legal Knowledge blueprint), read 14 October 2026.

The specification lists them as: “(1) Business Law and Practice; (2) Dispute Resolution; (3) Contract Law; (4) Tort; (5) Legal System of England and Wales; Constitutional and Administrative Law and EU Law (collectively referred to as ‘Legal System’) and (6) Legal Services.” Each has its own assessment objectives in the FLK1 specification, and each belongs to one of the two sessions.

The weighting is in Annex 4 of the specification, which the SRA calls the blueprint. The SQE website’s preparation page describes it as “a percentage range or ‘blueprint’ indicating the proportion of questions candidates could be asked in each subject area” and adds that “it may be helpful for candidates to review this as part of their revision”. The question columns below are our arithmetic: the range multiplied by the number of questions on the paper.

How to read a range. Annex 4 explains its own method, which it calls “Single Best Classification”: “an item is assigned to the classification that is considered to be the primary focus of that question.” It then warns that questions do not fit neatly into one box, because “an item may require knowledge of ‘dispute resolution’ and ‘contract’ in order for a candidate to answer it correctly”, and concludes that “a blueprint may describe an assessment as having 20% of questions on a particular classification, but application of the knowledge in that classification would be required to answer more than 20% of the questions included in the paper”. In plain terms: the range counts each question once, under its main subject, so the range understates how often you will need a subject.

From January 2027 the six subject areas are divided between the two sessions of the FLK1 day, 85 questions each. The specification’s table puts Business Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution and Legal Services in session 1 and Tort, Contract Law and Legal Systems in session 2, and says that “within each session, questions are fully randomised”, so the three subjects of a session arrive in mixed order.

The last two columns are worth a moment, and the reading is ours, not the SRA’s. Each session is exactly half the paper, yet session 2’s three subjects could, on their ranges alone, add up to anything from 42% to 60%. They cannot all sit at 14%, because that leaves the afternoon short of 85 questions; and they cannot all sit at 20%, because that overfills it. If every question in a session is classified to one of that session’s three subjects, the three afternoon subjects average about 28 questions each (85 ÷ 3), and the two larger morning subjects share whatever Legal Services leaves: between about 58 and 65 questions, so roughly 29 to 32 each. The SRA has not published per-session numbers, and how questions whose main focus is ethics are counted is not stated, so treat these as a planning estimate, not a rule.

Ethics and Professional Conduct has no row of its own in the blueprint: the table says it “Pervades”. But Annex 4 does put a ceiling on it: “In any SQE1 sitting (FLK1 and FLK2), Ethics and Professional Conduct and money laundering questions can make up to 20% of the questions assessed (money laundering questions being assessed in FLK1 only).” On a 170-question paper 20% is 34 questions (our arithmetic); note that the SRA’s sentence is about a sitting, both papers together, and is a maximum, not a target.

Two practical points follow from the specification. Money laundering is examined in FLK1 only, and it sits inside Legal Services, in session 1. And ethics has no section of its own in either session: the specification says ethics questions “can be examined across all subject areas” and are “based on realistic client-based problems and situations which can include those set out in relevant SRA warning notices, such as those relating to Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation (SLAPPs)”. Your result later reports “Ethics and professional conduct” as its own line in the FLK1 breakdown.

The FLK1 specification lists the legal knowledge for each area. The table condenses those lists; the specification page is the authority, and a topic missing from this summary is not thereby excluded.

The cut-off rule gives real dates. The booking-windows page lists the “examinable law and practice cut off date (up to and including)” for each sitting: 11 September 2026 for the January 2027 SQE1 (FLK1 on 11 to 15 January 2027) and 12 March 2027 for the July 2027 SQE1 (FLK1 on 12 to 16 July 2027).

Source: SQE website, “Understanding your SQE1 results” (“For SQE1 assessments taken on or after January 2027, the number of questions in each FLK assessment will be 170 (not 180)”), the SQE1 assessment-day page and the SRA news of 10 September 2026. Our guide to the SQE1 format change from January 2027 covers the change itself, the FLK2 session map and the pacing; this page and that one describe the same format, and where a count differs by sitting each says which sitting it means. The content specification on this page is the one “applicable for assessments from 1 September 2026”, so it governs the January 2027 sitting; the SRA reviews it annually.

The blueprint decides what you are asked; the results page tells you afterwards how you did in each area. For FLK1 it gives a breakdown for “Business Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution, Contract Law, Tort, Legal System (including Constitutional and Administrative Law and EU Law), Legal Services, Ethics and professional conduct”, each as a scaled score out of 500. The SRA attaches two warnings. The subject scores “should be considered cautiously as being indicative of your overall knowledge in each practice area given the relatively low number of questions on each area”. And “the assessment is compensatory in nature, so candidates may pass an FLK even if they perform less well in a subject area, and vice versa”: there is one pass mark for the paper, not one per subject.

Our advice, argued from the ranges above.

1. Give the five 14–20% subjects equal time to start with. Their ranges are identical, so nothing published justifies favouring one. Adjust by your own weak areas, not by a guess at the paper.
2. Do not short-change Legal Services. Its range is lower (12–16%), but it carries money laundering and financial services, and its questions sit in session 1 beside the two practice-heavy subjects.
3. Revise by session as well as by subject. Because a session is three subjects in mixed order, practise switching between them. Our SQE1 FLK1 practice set is built that way: 45 questions on each session’s subjects, 16 on Business Law and Practice, 15 on Dispute Resolution and 14 on Legal Services in one part, and 15 each on Contract Law, Tort and Legal System in the other, with 3 questions free (2 in part 1 and 1 in part 2).
4. Treat ethics as part of every subject. Up to a fifth of a sitting can be ethics and money laundering, and it has no section of its own.
5. Fix your law at the cut-off date. For January 2027 that is 11 September 2026. A change after that date is not examined at that sitting.
6. Because the paper is compensatory, do not abandon a subject. A strong subject can offset a weak one, but each area is still at least 12% of the paper.

1. A fixed number of questions per subject, or per session. The SRA publishes ranges only. Every question count on this page is our arithmetic.
2. How questions whose main focus is ethics are counted against the six subject ranges. Annex 4 says ethics “pervades” and gives the 20% ceiling, nothing more.
3. The split inside a subject area, for example how much of Business Law and Practice is taxation. No sub-weighting is published.
4. The actual mix of any past paper. The statistical reports give pass rates and score distributions, not the number of questions per subject.
5. A line-by-line account of what changed in the specification for 1 September 2026. The SQE website lists the changes on its “SQE changes (Sept 2026)” page; we have not reproduced that list here, so read it if you are comparing against an older edition of the specification.