2.1 The SRA Principles

Why the Principles sit at the centre of SQE1

Ethics and professional conduct are pervasive. The SQE1 Assessment Specification for assessments from 1 September 2026 requires candidates to apply the SRA Standards and Regulations to realistic client-based problems across FLK1 (Business Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution, Contract, Tort, Legal System, and Legal Services) and FLK2 (Property Law and Practice, Wills and the Administration of Estates, Solicitors' Accounts in those contexts, Land Law, Trusts, Criminal Liability, and Criminal Law and Practice). Annex 4 of that specification states that, in any sitting, Ethics and Professional Conduct and money-laundering questions can make up to 20% of the questions assessed, with money-laundering questions assessed in FLK1 only. Anti-money laundering is a Legal Services topic on FLK1. It is not a substitute for ethics: a conveyancing file can test both a conflict (ethics, anywhere on the paper) and a suspicion of money laundering (Legal Services / AML).

This independent OpenExamPrep chapter teaches the current Principles as published on the SRA Principles page (current version in effect from 11 April 2025, made by the SRA Board on 16 December 2024). It is study material written for SQE1 candidates in England and Wales. It is not an SRA product and does not claim official approval.

Official source: SRA Principles.

Who must uphold them

The SRA describes the Principles as the "fundamental tenets of ethical behaviour" expected of everyone it regulates: solicitors, registered European lawyers (RELs), registered foreign lawyers (RFLs) and registered Swiss lawyers (RSLs), plus authorised firms and their managers and employees. For licensed bodies they apply to the people, and the part of the body, involved in delivering the services the SRA regulates under the licence.

They apply to conduct that touches realistically upon practice, including some behaviour outside the office. SQE1 still tests them through client-based scenarios: a newly qualified solicitor deciding what to do next on a live matter.

The seven current Principles — official wording

The instrument opens: "You act:"

Memorise the official verbs. Principle 1 is not a vague "be fair" slogan: it is the constitutional principle of the rule of law and the proper administration of justice. Principle 6 is a duty to encourage equality, diversity and inclusion, which is wider than a bare ban on discrimination (the discrimination rule for individuals sits in Code paragraph 1.1). Principle 7 is each client — not "the client who pays more" and not "the clients as a group".

Honesty is not the same as integrity

Principle 4 (honesty). The SRA applies the two-stage test from Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords [2017] UKSC 67: first, what was the individual's genuine knowledge or belief as to the facts at the time; second, in light of that knowledge or belief, was the conduct dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people? There is no extra requirement that the person realised ordinary people would call it dishonest. The reasonableness of a belief is evidence of whether it was genuinely held; it is not a separate legal ingredient. Bolton v Law Society [1993] EWCA Civ 32 remains the public-protection backdrop: a solicitor may be "trusted to the ends of the earth", and a proven dishonesty finding at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal usually means strike-off.

Principle 5 (integrity) is wider. In Wingate v SRA [2018] EWCA Civ 366, Jackson LJ described integrity as a useful shorthand for the higher standards society expects of professional people. A solicitor can lack integrity without being dishonest. The Wingate facts are the exam-friendly illustration: a partner signed a written loan agreement that the firm could not and would not honour, expecting a less onerous side arrangement later; the Court of Appeal treated that as lack of integrity even though dishonesty was not the live allegation on appeal. Beckwith v SRA [2020] EWHC 3231 (Admin) adds that a Principle 5 allegation should, where possible, be grounded in an underlying Code provision, and that private conduct must touch realistically upon practice. Solicitors are not required to be "paragons of virtue" in every private moment, but they are required to be more scrupulous about accuracy than a member of the public in daily discourse.

SQE1 will rarely ask you to recite those case names unless the name is the usual label for the rule. It will ask you to apply the distinction. A newly qualified solicitor who genuinely believed, because a now-dead partner said so, that it was "firm practice" to add the firm's names as witnesses after clients had already signed wills may escape a dishonesty finding and still lack integrity, because the profession's ethical standard is higher than "I thought it was efficient."

Independence and "each" client

Principle 3 is independence from the client, the firm, the funder, the introducer, and your own financial interest. An in-house solicitor whose only client is the employer still owes Principle 3: if the board wants a letter that misstates the legal position to a regulator, you do not write it. A third party who pays the bill does not buy the right to suppress advice. Principle 7 then forces a client-by-client analysis. Acting "in the clients' interests" as a blended group is a common wrong answer when two clients' interests are starting to diverge.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Principle 6 is not limited to avoiding Equality Act 2010 breaches (those also appear in FLK1 Legal Services as overriding legal obligations). Encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion includes how you take instructions, how you staff a matter, and how you treat colleagues. Code paragraph 1.5 requires you to treat colleagues fairly and with respect and, if you are a manager, to challenge behaviour that does not meet that standard. On SQE1, a vignette about a trainee being belittled in front of a client is an ethics question as well as a workplace fact.

When Principles collide — court versus client

The SRA's published introduction (which does not itself form part of the numbered Principles, but is the conflict rule you must apply) states that if the Principles come into conflict, those which safeguard the wider public interest — such as the rule of law, and public confidence in a trustworthy solicitors' profession and a safe and effective market for regulated legal services — take precedence over an individual client's interests. You should, where relevant, inform your client of the circumstances in which your duty to the Court and other professional obligations will outweigh your duty to them.

Worked pattern: a claimant in the County Court tells you to omit a damaging email from standard disclosure. Principle 7 pulls towards the outcome the client wants. Principles 1, 2, 4 and 5, and Code paragraph 1.4 (do not mislead the court, including by omission or by being complicit in the client's acts), pull the other way. The public-interest Principles win. You advise that a disclosable document must be disclosed; if the client refuses, you cannot continue to advance a misleading case. You cease acting if that is what remaining honest requires. You do not "quietly not mention it" to keep the fees.

The same hierarchy is restated in the SRA warning notices on non-disclosure agreements and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs): the duty to act in the client's best interests does not override the duties to uphold the proper administration of justice, public trust, independence, and integrity.

How SQE1 embeds the Principles in FLK1 and FLK2

Treat every subject as a possible ethics wrapper:

• FLK1 Dispute Resolution: not misleading the court; only properly arguable assertions (Code 2.4); not wasting the court's time.
• FLK1 Business / Contract: own-interest conflict if you or your spouse hold shares in the target company; independence from a paid introducer.
• FLK1 Legal Services: reserved legal activities, professional indemnity insurance, the Equality Act 2010 — and AML as a distinct Legal Services topic that can combine with ethics inside the Annex 4 band of up to 20%.
• FLK2 Property: undertakings to redeem a charge; acting for buyer and seller; source-of-funds issues that also raise AML.
• FLK2 Crime: duty to the court versus instructions to put forward a known false alibi.
• FLK2 Wills: identifying who the client is (the testator, not the paying relative) and not taking unfair advantage.

Exam traps

• Treating ethics as a stand-alone Legal Services topic. It pervades both papers.
• Collapsing honesty and integrity into one answer option.
• Letting Principle 7 "win" against the court.
• Reciting the old 2011 Handbook's ten Principles; there are now seven, and honesty and integrity are separate.
• Treating this independent OpenExamPrep chapter as an SRA publication. It teaches the published Principles; it is not an SRA product and does not claim official approval.

Keep the official Principles page open while you revise: the wording is short enough to learn accurately, and SQE1 rewards precise application rather than slogans.