SQE Tell-all: All questions welcome

[average_jo123]

Hi all, this forum has been such a lifesaver when I was prepping for SQE1 so I thought I'd come back and return the favour.

About me:

• 23 y/o female. Graduated with law degree from RG uni in 2023. Future trainee at a US firm.
• Studied full-time at ULaw on the LLM Legal Practice (SQE1&2) course from September 2024 onwards. I was sponsored by my firm to study there and I was also given a maintenance grant.
• Sat SQE1 in January 2025. Found out in March 2025 that I passed both FLK1 and FLK2 in the first quintile. Sat SQE2 in April/May 2025. I will find out whether I have passed SQE2 in August 2025 (fingers crossed!). I start my training contract in September 2025.

I will not be able to say much about SQE2 as I don't know if I have passed yet. But I am happy to share my preliminary thoughts on my experience prepping for it and how I felt going in and coming out of SQE2 exams.

I initially planned to write a long article detailing my experience but realised halfway in that it was taking me longer than I expected. Also I drafted it here but the draft didn't save lol RIP. So I figured it might be more productive to just start a new thread and answer questions as and when needed. I will monitor this thread and answer questions for the next few months until I start my training contract in September.

I might add to this thread bits and bobs that I think would be helpful as and when I remember them. I mainly just want to chat about my experience while it is still fresh in my head and hopefully that proves useful for someone prepping for these exams or are about to start their prep course soon, so you can learn from my mistakes and go into the exams feeling more confident.

I would also like to caveat that my experience will be specific to ULaw, so might not be applicable to you if you are prepping with another provider. But hopefully the more generic bits will still be helpful to you.

I am not claiming that whatever I say here is true. You should take what I say with a grain of salt, take on board what you think works for you and ignore whatever else I say that you think is untrue or unreliable. Exercise your own judgment to figure out what approach works for you as you prep for these exams. I am only sharing what I believe to be true in my experience. If you disagree or had a different approach to certain things, please feel free to share below — would be great to have a mix of different perspectives here.

 

[average_jo123]

Before starting the prep course​

I took a gap year before starting my prep course, and I remember feeling extremely anxious about getting a headstart.

What I did in the few months leading up to the start of the course: ​

• I started the course at the end of September. I practically did nothing leading up to September.
• I knew that there was a lot of content to learn. But just didn't know where to start.

What I wish I had done differently: ​

SRA assessment specification

• Start familiarising yourself with the spec for SQE1. On the SRA website it is laid out in the most horrible way. Copy and paste this into a Word or Excel document that you can use to check off your understanding on each topic as you go through the course.
• Have a look at the SRA SQE1 sample questions to get a rough idea on the type of questions you will need to get used to. I heard that ULaw has already incorporated single best answer questions (SBAQs) into their PGDL course so if you have done the PGDL lately you probably would already be familiar with this. But if you haven't, just have a look at the questions to get some idea. Don't worry about 'wasting' these practice questions — by the time you re-attempt these questions 4 months down the road, you probably would have forgotten its contents. Knowing how the questions would look like would help focus your note-taking / flashcard-making technique later on.

Outline, outline, outline

• I wish I had spent less time during the course doing admin and putting my notes in good order. Because I had no time to deal with admin and formatting, I basically had no solid database of long-form notes on hand - which added to a lot of my stress. Whilst you have time before the course starts, create a master document for each subject with different tabs with the contents of the SRA spec as headings. This way, as you are going through the course, you will be more assured that you are actually covering the content in the spec bit by bit. ULaw's manuals are actually laid out quite helpfully and covers each item in the spec quite methodically in a logical order. So as you are making your outlines, just have the ULaw manual's table of contents and the SRA spec side by side and see how you can line up the content and have a very comprehensive set of notes by the end.
• This was probably one of my biggest mistakes, as I kind of just winged it and stuck to only the ULaw manuals throughout the course without even properly looking at the SRA spec more than once in the first 3 months of the course. And towards the end I was in a mad panic because I felt like there were so many gaps in my knowledge as I was checking off topics from the spec. It wasn't because I actually didn't know the content required in the spec (if you tested me on the substantive content under that heading, I probably will get a good handful of questions correct), but more so because I was so disorganised - so it felt like there was a lot of stuff in the spec I didn't know. From my experience, just making my way through the ULaw manuals and doing the practice SBAQs meant that I knew enough to cover the spec to a good degree, but I just could have saved myself from the last minute panic if I had been more organised from the start and methodically checked things off and tested my understanding on each topic as I went along.

Revision techniques

• Try and work out what works for you early on rather than waste the first month of the course figuring this out. Of course there will inevitably be some trial and error after you start the course, but I think there are certain things you can pretty much figure out beforehand whilst you still have free time. One such example of trial and error is that I realised halfway through the course I simply could not keep up with making long form notes. I chatted to my classmates about this and a few of them thought the same. So for certain subjects I had to somewhat wing it, ditch the long form notes and instead, just read through the manuals, go straight to practising questions and fill in the gaps from there. I personally wouldn't recommend this as the topics that I took shortcuts on were the very ones that haunt me and keep me up at night lol because I knew I didn't understand them in enough detail and I was just so worried that the SRA would trap me with loads of these questions on specifically these very weak topics of mine.
• I figured out in the first month of the course that flashcards work well for me. This is very much a matter of personal preference - some of my classmates swore by not using flashcards at all and it worked for them as they all passed in Q1 as well. But I personally preferred flashcards given active recall and spaced repetition as learning techniques is science-backed and I felt more comfortable knowing that I am testing myself consistently rather than just reading reading passively from words on a page. If you do decide on using flashcards, then comes the question of what tools you will use for flashcards — handwritten, Quizlet or Anki. IMO handwritten wastes way too much time (there is so much content I knew it's not worth the effort + you don't have a spaced repetition algorithm to know which decks to review and how frequently) and I wasn't sure if I could take full advantage of Quizlet without paying for the premium subscription, so I personally went with Anki as it is completely free on Mac/Windows and my medic friends swear on Anki's spaced repetition algorithm. You can also share decks on Anki with your classmates if you do decide to help each other out and exchange decks. I'd say spend time before the start of your course familiarising yourself with Anki + all its features and shortcuts (this tutorial on Youtube is a good crash course) so when the course starts and you need to bash out flashcards, you can make them very quickly. A lot of people think Anki looks too complicated - but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it's really not that deep. I don't find it any less user-friendly than Quizlet and I especially liked the fact that I could customise my cards with things like clozes and customise my study sessions with tags. I might make a separate post on how I used flashcards on Anki — what worked and what didn't work + some of my other thoughts on note-taking in general. But for the purposes of this post, what I recommend is just - whatever it is that you plan to do, try to get the admin out of the way because all this admin will just slow you down once the course starts. I had to learn Anki from scratch the past year as I've never had to use it for memorising in my undergrad years, so if it's your first time using Anki as well, best to get to grips with it before the course starts.

Accessing ULaw materials early

• Once you are enrolled with ULaw, I'm pretty sure you will have access to the virtual learning environment and the online library pretty early on. You won't have access to Westlaw / Practical Law / Lexis+ until you start your course but you don't need those to get started on your learning / revision. All you need is the ULaw SQE manuals - so get your hands on them early if you can. From there, just start learning and revising from those manuals, and as explained above, start making outlines for them and make notes if you have the time.
• I'm not sure when exactly you get access to the ULaw practice app i.e. the platform / app that houses all the practice SBAQs - but if you do get access to it early, you can even start doing some practice questions as you learn the content.
• Don't worry too much about learning the practice modules e.g. Business Law and Practice, Property Practice, Criminal Practice, Wills and Admin, Legal Services, Solicitors Accounts — these subjects are quite a lot harder to understand without teaching from the tutors as it will be the first time you encounter them. If you do want to start early, just start with the academic law modules first i.e. Contract, Tort, Trusts, Public and EU, Criminal, Land. The academic modules are straightforward and easy to understand just from reading the manuals, as you would have learnt the basics of it already from either your law degree or PGDL and from there it's just building on your understanding with content specific to the SRA SQE1 spec.

 

[average_jo123]

Note-taking and flashcards​

The way the course was structured (at least when I studied it) was each week you need to prep for your workshops for the practice modules. In the prep materials they will tell you which academic law chapters you should read up. Then, at the end of the week, you get 15 practice SBAQs for each topic to practice on to test your understanding.

What I did:​

• Again, as above, my downfall for this course was truly how disorganised I was lol. I did for the most part keep up with the reading in preparation for the practice module workshops as well as the academic law - also made flashcards for most topics. But I did slip in certain weeks and once you slip it is extremely hard to catch up. So it's extremely important to maintain momentum throughout the course, which, fortunately, I was able to do for the most part even though I was behind on certain topics and even until the run up to the exams I was still playing catch up and eventually had to wing a few topics - but I strongly advise against this and you want to cover as much base as possible to give you peace of mind going into the exam.
• For the weeks I did keep up with the suggested reading, I basically just had the ULaw manual on one side of my screen and Anki on the other and I would just make flashcards from the content from the manuals.
• For the most part I always kept up with the weekly practice test, even on weeks where I haven't thoroughly reviewed the academic law or even the practice portions. I knew that my sponsor firm was low key keeping tabs on us so I knew I just had to bash out the weekly practice tests somehow, even when I completely bomb them and fail — at least I tried. And I made a mental note to come back and re-attempt them closer to the exams — which I did do, and by the time I re-attempted them 2 months later, I have forgotten every single question, which again, just proves that you don't need to worry too much about 'wasting' practice questions whilst you still don't know the content. Just wing it to check your understanding and reinforce your knowledge again a later date.

What I wish I had done differently:​

• Open up all the prepare sections for the workshops which includes the reading you need to do for the practice module as well as the accompanying academic law module and transfer it into a big table. This will basically form your study plan and once you lay it all out you will see how the course is structured to help you get through the material week by week leading up to the exam. Because I didn't have a big picture, each week just felt like such a tough slog. But in retrospect, I feel I would have been much better off if I had a bigger picture of say ok, I have missed 2 chapters from criminal law reading this week, and I have 3 chapters I need to read by next week and 2 more chapters the following week. How am I going to catch up? How can I spread out the work but still make sure I cover this in enough detail before the exam? Skim the manual — does the material look dense? Or does it look disgestible? Can you afford to push this back or not? Or can you just crack on with it but make notes that are more sparse? This would have given me so much more peace of mind. Instead, I constantly drowned myself in work with no flexibility on when I can afford to slip a bit but find room to catch up later in a manageable way. Don't make the same mistake — either create your own study plan or just stick to the one that ULaw has laid out (which will help you cover all topics if you do just stick to it) and know when you can / cannot afford to give yourself breathing space.
• I mentioned above that note-taking, flashcards and how you learn and memorise can be a bit of a trial and error. What's most important is finding what works best for you and the most efficient way to get through the materials and just stick to it. I recall about 6 weeks before the exam a conversation I had with my classmates. We were talking about how it is near impossible to actually know all the material in enough detail and to find enough time to make notes on all examinable areas. One of my classmates said that she found that it was way too overwhelming (especially with only 6 weeks to go) to read the whole manual cover to cover and make detailed notes, as you just get stressed out thinking about every little detail that you might get tested on. Instead, as a last resort to at least get some information in her head, for the topics that she just has no time to cover, she will simply read through it once or twice, close the book and try to blurt out whatever she can remember and at least try to commit to memory the rough outline of what the topic is about and the key concepts, but not the fine print. This was just one example that I encountered of what trial and error looks like. As the course progresses you will find that at certain points you grow more and more desperate lol and inevitably I do think at certain points of the course and for some topics you just have to do what you have to do to get through the material, even if you are not retaining it perfectly or getting it right all the time. You just need to adapt your approach according to your circumstances. I kind of did a similar thing for certain topics during weeks I fell seriously behind, where I kind of just winged it by making super sparse flashcards solely from practice questions. Important thing to note is just that you acknowledge that winging it should be a desperate measure for desperate times and by no means should be your default. And even if you did take certain shortcuts just to get through the week at a certain point, you need to remember to go back to those topics to check you actually understand enough to tackle tricky questions on it which may come up during the exam.
• I have seen people share on TikTok that apparently you can use AI to transform material into podcasts? I've not seen how good these AI-generated podcasts are but if it works for you, go for it. But I would approach using AI with a certain level of caution. I have tried to use ChatGPT for my SQE studies but from personal experience I have just found that it gets things wrong a bit too much for me to trust it lol — and I've encountered this problem with both the free version as well as when I paid for ChatGPT premium. For some reason I feel ChatGPT doesn't quite grasp some really nuanced concepts unless I specifically direct it to do so and correct these misunderstandings. I have also had too many instances of ChatGPT straight up hallucinating law to me, which was very frustrating. But I do acknowledge that maybe it's because I'm not using it the right way or using the correct prompts, so take my opinion on ChatGPT for SQE prep with a pinch of salt. I think there is no harm getting ChatGPT to summarise a chapter from your textbook for you before you start reading it in detail to make the content slightly more digestible, but I think the key is you need to then actually read and comprehend the material for yourself and not rely on ChatGPT to do it for you. Then, check your understanding with practice questions and chat to your classmates or your tutors about it — I personally wouldn't rely on ChatGPT to check if my understanding on a very nuanced piece of law is correct.
• My ULaw manual to Anki trick somewhat worked(?) but the main issue with doing this was by the end of my SQE1 prep I had WAY too many flashcards — I had approx 9,500 cards LOL which was humanly impossible to review. And I spent way too much time making the flashcards rather than reviewing them, which completely defeats the purpose of using Anki. Towards the end the only way I could salvage this situation was by tagging the most important flashcards and only reviewing those - but this also turned into another thing that kept me up at night. I was worried that I hadn't tagged or reviewed enough cards and that there were still thousands of cards left unreviewed that the SRA could test me on. All this shows was that there was something seriously wrong with my flashcard-making technique — here is how I would have done it differently:
  • Start out long form notes of the materials — use the outlines you've prepared using the SRA spec as the headings. Understand the content and write it in a way that you understand. Bullet point it, table it, do whatever to make it easier for YOU to understand it. It will be easier for you further down the line if you have a big picture understanding of the topic and see how one subtopic connects with another. The problem I've found with using Anki solely was that I knew a lot of weirdly specific information by heart lol but lacked understanding the moment you asked me about say the overall process of something. Both big picture and small print are extremely important. You need to have understanding of big picture processes as well as small print details like deadlines for appeals / service of documents under the CPR. I struggled a bit more especially when it came to SQE2 when I realised I lacked understanding in the former. I did make a good handful of flowcharts and tables — but I just wish I had made more to help with retention of my big picture knowledge so everything would click a bit easier.
  • Once you have your long form notes, then generate flashcards out of your condensed notes. Look at the material line by line, see how it fits into the SRA spec and ask yourself "how can this come up in an SBAQ?". If you can easily see how it can be tested, make a flashcard out of it. When you do this, think GRANULAR. SQE1 questions were so incredibly broad and detailed at the same time it was borderline insane. Once you start doing practice questions, you will see a pattern for the super examinable topics. Flashcard those and make sure these critical points stick. Even for the ones that you haven't been examined in the ULaw question bank or any other question bank that you've attempted, I think the key is really going through the material line by line and thinking critically about how you can really commit to memory this piece of information in the form of a flashcard. This way, your flashcards will be much more focused and condensed, unlike my 9,500 flashcards filled with random crap that was impossible for me to guess even when I was trying to review them lol. For the content that you didn't manage to flashcard, you will at least know that you have covered it in your long-form notes, which you can easily revisit and refresh your memory when you need it. But if I were to do it all over again, I would focus on using my flashcards a bit more strategically and use it to drum in the key granular bits that keeps slipping from my memory, and the big picture stuff I would have reviewed from my long form notes with any spare time I had.
• On the note of thinking critically whilst making flashcards, I would like to caveat that I am only saying this in retrospect. In retrospect, I feel I would have saved myself more time if I had just spent more time critically analysing how I went about flashcards instead of doing all of them in such a mad rush and ending up with 9,000 cards which I can't review properly due to the sheer quantity but also the way I have created them meant I wasn't actually testing myself on stuff that mattered. I feel it might have been more effective if I had been more focused and produced only maybe 900 instead.​
• However, I would like to note that even if you do think critically as you create your flashcards, (1) it will take you more time to do so because you would be putting more thought into it and (2) you should still bear in mind that ultimately it is impossible to anticipate what the SRA might come up with. After I came out from my FLK1 exam I broke down crying profusely because I felt so utterly helpless and disheartened. I felt that for some subjects I had tried my very best to anticipate and prepare myself for what I thought would be examinable content but I just kept getting reminded of all the questions where I knew one very specific piece of information, but not specific enough. It would literally be maybe one sentence from the manual that I knew but the question would test me on a very specific fact that is adjacent to what I know — which meant I didn't know it in enough detail to answer the question.​
• You should also bear in mind that the ULaw manuals are not gospel. Though I believe it is relatively comprehensive, the SRA does not set its questions based on facts you learn from the ULaw manuals. So the truth is, even if you are critically thinking and being strategic with your flashcards, in theory everything is examinable (yes, including parts in the manual which you brush off and think - "there's no way the SRA can make a question out of that" — they CAN, they MAY and they sometimes WILL). There will also be some stuff that may not have been covered in detail by ULaw which the SRA might pick up and test you on. Good news is you don't need to know every examinable detail to pass — you just need to know ENOUGH. Which is why if I could do it all over again, I would preferably have more focused flashcards + long form notes to really help me fill in the gaps of the little details in between that I may be tested on. Overall, I would encourage strategic flashcard-making, but also balanced against not getting to hung up on trying to predict what may or may not come up — because you can't. You just need to have a good balance of both very focused flashcards to help the key points stick and also detailed enough long form notes that you know you can fall back on for the finer details.​
• I do realise that I sound really vague as I describe what I mean by granular and detail of knowledge expected, but I only do this out of respect to the confidentiality agreement I signed. I cannot give specific examples of questions I encountered and the level of detail expected. But you will be able to gauge the level of detail expected once you start attempting more of ULaw's practice SBAQs. From there, just treat the difficulty of questions and the level of detail tested in ULaw's practice questions as the floor, not the ceiling compared to the real thing. I will make a separate post addressing more on my thoughts about using practice questions in revision.​

 

[Jessica Booker]

Thank you so much for these detailed posts! It’s really great to have so much insight from someone who has gone through this process.

 

[average_jo123]

Subject-specific advice for SQE1​

I've seen quite a few questions floating around here as well as Reddit about which topics you could possibly ignore and still pass. People have mixed opinions about this and I have seen questionable advice given on Reddit as well as TikTok — saying things like you can ignore solicitors' accounts and certain tax topics and still pass. In theory this is correct, but only if you can make sure that you get an almost perfect score on everything else lol — from my experience, this is not a chance you want to take. I personally felt like the only way that I personally could find any little bit of reassurance was you want a decent coverage across the entire FLK blueprint (see Annex 4 of the spec).

English legal system:​

The ULaw manuals for English Legal System was so UNBELIEVABLY LONG. I remember having a full scale meltdown during the week I had to cover separation of powers lol. It is incredibly boring and is not covered in way that is remotely intellectually stimulating like the way you are introduced to the subject back at undergrad level. And of course, I don't expect any of this content to be exhilarating, as it is only meant to prepare you for a handful of mind-numbing SBAQs. The biggest struggle I had with English Legal System is I found it hard to revise for because I found it extremely hard to imagine how an SBAQ can be crafted from this sort of information e.g. how does one become a lord in the House of Lords 💀. But anyone who has sat the exam will tell you, you absolutely cannot neglect this subject and you do need to have a decent grasp on the content. You just need to find the right way to revise for it. ELS was one of those subjects that I did put in effort making flashcards at the start, but tapered off towards the end when every other subject seemed to become more important and demanded more of my time. But I do think it's just one of those subjects that would have been more manageable if I thought a bit more critically as I was making my flashcards - noting the key points and stuff you can anticipate being examinable, rather than trying to plow through hundreds of pages of extremely boring content. I look back on my flashcards now and they make absolutely no sense and reviewing them was a nightmare.

EU law:​

This will be specific to ULaw only — the question bank in the ULaw practice app can be outdated. The simple errors like outdated tax rates are calm but the outdated questions on EU law properly screwed with my head. Basically the position on retained EU law etc changed drastically post-REULA 2023 but some of the questions in the bank didn't reflect this as they would have been drafted back in 2022. ULaw may have fixed this already by the time the next batch of students arrive but in case this has not been resolved, just make sure you get to grips with the actual law first, then attempt the questions so you can easily spot when the question is outdated and that you are not tripping.

Legal services:​

If you examine the SQE1 reports you will see that legal services is consistently one of the lowest scoring modules across all candidates. The content isn't at all tricky, just boring. And I suspect that's why a lot of people (myself included) ignore and avoid it to some extent lol. Again, check Annex 4 of the spec and remind yourself that just because it's boring doesn't mean you can let yourself go on this subject. I found legal services challenging for almost the same reason as ELS above - I found it really hard to pick out what is examinable and what isn't. I think you can try to work this out to create flashcards strategically but at the same time, you do need to have really detailed knowledge across the board even for the stuff that at first glance, you don't think is examinable - because the SRA can very well think otherwise lol. Don't underestimate the level of detail they can test even on the most unassuming topics like POCA or FSMA.

Tax:​

This forms a huge part of the FLK blueprint and is not something you can or should skip. I remember another user on this forum in the year above who said something similar, and I completely agree. Even if it takes you a whole day to figure it out, you do just need to lock in and do it. If you struggle with starting out with the fine print, just start with practice questions first and work your way backwards. I remember feeling like pulling my hair out when I did the inheritance tax reading in the wills manual for the first time - needless to say the flashcards I made were complete rubbish because I completely didn't understand what I was reading (wasted so much time on this!!). Same went to some of the other tax topics like income, capital gains and corporation tax. But it all clicked only after I attended the workshops and was guided on how to calculate and apply the reliefs. So there might be some topics where if I could do it all over again, I probably would have stopped pulling my hair out earlier, just skim the manual and try to understand it in the workshop, then schedule in time to come back to it again to make long-form flowcharts, tables or notes on the fine print, only after I at least understand the big picture. For both SQE1 and SQE2, unfortunately in my experience, you do need to know both big picture and fine print.

Ethics and professional conduct:​

The most effective way to make notes for ethics and PC that I've found is this:

Para from CoC	Exact wording from CoC	Remarks	Example scenarios
1.1		Explanation of what this para means	Scenarios which you may be tested on in relation to this particular para in the CoC
1.2 ... repeat for all other paras

This way everything is in one place and you can be sure you've covered basically the whole Code of Conduct. I found flashcards slightly less helpful for this topic, as the questions are so fact-dependent. So the more you go through the example scenarios and how it relates to each para and how it applies, you would be able to choose the right option.

I wish I had made a giant table for the CoC earlier instead of fumbling about with flashcards trying to predict what type of ethics questions might come up. For CoC-related questions, just familiarise yourself with the effect of the para itself and focus on learning how to apply it to complex fact patterns. Also don't neglect all other parts of ethics and PC e.g. SRA principles and what it means in detail.

From my experience in SQE1, the ethics questions really do pervade. Some of them were extremely tricky because the fact patterns were very long and complex. In retrospect I felt that even if I had memorised the entire ULaw ethics textbook, I still couldn't have answered those questions LOL. So I felt it was a matter of literally just understanding how specific provisions of the CoC apply and trying your best to apply it to the situation you are given.

Solicitors' accounts:​

This was another one of those topics where reading from the manual alone without having a clue how to apply it made me want to pull my hair out. Things started to click a tiny bit more once I had some practice during the workshops. But I do recall I spent 1.5 days dedicated to just solicitors' accounts really drilling down on the accounts rules. I would recommend structuring SRA Accounts Rules notes as CoC above and make sure that you understand the effect of each para within the SRA Accounts Rules. Also do lots of practice questions to make sure that you can apply both double entry bookkeeping rules and SRA Accounts Rules to complex fact patterns. Again, you may be tempted to skip solicitors' accounts, but same as my thoughts on tax above, even if you find it difficult at first, just try to switch up how you're learning and give it a second go.

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These are just some subject-specific thoughts I had off the top of my head and major mistakes I made that hopefully you don't have to repeat and can save yourself precious time. If you have questions about any of these subjects or other subjects in particular, feel free to pop your questions below and I am happy to share more on how I approached it.

 

[Amma Usman]

@average_jo123 , this is extremely thoughtful of you! Such detail and precision! Many, including myself, will surely find all this useful! Wishing you the absolute best.