What FLK2 covers
FLK2 is the second SQE1 assessment: property, private client and criminal practice. From January 2027 it carries 170 questions across two sessions of 85, with the subjects split like this:
| Session | Subjects |
|---|---|
| Session 1 | Wills and the Administration of Estates · Trusts Law · Land Law · Solicitors Accounts |
| Session 2 | Property Law and Practice · Criminal Liability · Criminal Law and Practice · Solicitors Accounts |
As in FLK1, ethics and professional conduct run through everything. In FLK2 they most often appear as conflicts between clients in a transaction, undertakings in conveyancing, and duties to the court in criminal work.
Wills and the Administration of Estates
Validity and formalities, capacity, revocation and alteration, interpretation, and the effect of marriage or divorce on a will. Then the distribution: the intestacy rules, partial intestacy, gifts that fail, and claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. Then the administration: the grants of representation and who may apply, the personal representatives’ powers and duties, collecting and distributing the estate, and inheritance tax on lifetime transfers and on death.
Covered on its own in Wills and the Administration of Estates for SQE1.
Where candidates lose marks: intestacy arithmetic with a surviving spouse and children, and inheritance tax reliefs — the nil-rate band, the residence nil-rate band and transfers between spouses. These are the questions where knowing the rule approximately produces a confident wrong answer.
Trusts Law
Express trusts and the three certainties, formalities and constitution, resulting and constructive trusts, trusts of the family home, beneficial ownership disputes, the duties and powers of trustees including investment and delegation, breach of trust and the remedies, and equitable tracing.
Covered on its own in Trusts Law for SQE1.
It is the most conceptual subject in FLK2, and it repays being learnt as a sequence of tests rather than a body of theory: is there a valid trust, who holds the beneficial interest, what were the trustees obliged to do, what follows when they did not.
Land Law
Freehold and leasehold estates, the legal and equitable interests that can exist in land, co-ownership and the trust of land, registered and unregistered title and how interests bind a buyer, easements and covenants and their enforcement, mortgages, and the essentials of the landlord and tenant relationship.
Covered on its own in Land Law for SQE1.
Where candidates lose marks: priority. The recurring question is whether an interest survives a sale, which turns on registration, overriding status or notice — and the answer changes with the title.
Property Law and Practice
The transaction itself: taking instructions and checking for conflicts, investigating title, searches and enquiries, the contract and the standard conditions, exchange and the consequences, mortgage instructions and the lender’s requirements, completion, post-completion registration and stamp duty land tax (or land transaction tax in Wales), and remedies when a party fails to complete.
The transaction is taken stage by stage in Property Law and Practice for SQE1.
Undertakings deserve their own mention: they are examined regularly, they are professional conduct, and they are what a newly qualified conveyancer is most likely to get wrong in practice.
Criminal Liability and Criminal Practice
The substantive half covers the general principles — actus reus, mens rea, and the inchoate and accessorial routes to liability — with the core offences against the person and property, and the defences.
The practice half follows a case through the system: advice and procedure at the police station, including detention limits and the right to legal advice, first hearings and allocation, bail, case management, disclosure, trial procedure in the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court, the rules on admissibility — confessions, character, hearsay — and sentencing and appeals.
Both halves are covered in Criminal Liability and Practice for SQE1.
Where candidates lose marks: police station procedure and bail. These are detail-heavy, rule-governed areas where the exam can ask a precise question and mark it objectively, which is exactly why it does.
Solicitors Accounts
The SRA Accounts Rules, examined in both FLK2 sessions and always in the context of a real matter. The questions test the boundary between client money and business money, when money must be paid into the client account and when it may not be, transfers between the two, the treatment of disbursements and VAT, interest, breaches and how they must be corrected, and the record-keeping the rules require.
It has a guide of its own: Solicitors Accounts for SQE1.
There is no accounting expertise to acquire. Each question is a small story — a payment on account, a disbursement paid out, a bill delivered — and the work is to classify the money correctly and then say which entries follow. Drilled properly, it is one of the most reliable sources of marks in the paper, because the rules do not vary by scenario the way a tort question might.
Where the marks go
- Two subjects carry the paper. Property Practice and the wills and estates group generate a large share of the questions, and they also generate most of the near-misses, because the rules are precise and the distractors are close.
- Solicitors Accounts is free marks or lost marks. Nothing in between, and which one it is depends entirely on whether you drilled it.
- The criminal half rewards procedure. Candidates tend to over-revise the substantive offences and under-revise the timetable of a case.
If you are choosing where to spend a limited week, spend it where your own breakdown says the marks are leaking — not where a general guide says. The companion piece for the other paper is the FLK1 subject guide, and practice questions done properly explains how to make a breakdown worth acting on.