1.2 Single Best Answer Technique and Assessment Day

The live item format

Quick answer: Every SQE1 question is a single-best-answer (SBA) item with five options. One option is the best answer on the facts and scores 1 mark. Any other response scores 0. There is no negative marking. The papers are closed book, set at newly qualified solicitor level, and sat at a Pearson VUE centre under Kaplan delivery.

OpenExamPrep practice in this guide uses four options so that the on-page quiz engine matches the rest of the site. The real SQE1 item has five suggested answers. That extra distractor matters. The SRA's marking page is blunt: the correct answer is the best of the stated alternatives. Several options can be legally respectable in the abstract. Only one is the best application of functioning legal knowledge to this client, this retainer, and these facts.

Because there is no negative marking, a blank is a wasted mark. If you are still staring at an item as the session clock hits the last minute, enter your best remaining choice. Multiple answers on one item also score zero, so do not try to “hedge” by selecting two options that both look plausible.

Functioning legal knowledge, not trivia

The Assessment Specification ties SQE1 to Level 3 of the Threshold Standard in Annex 6: the standard of a newly qualified solicitor of England and Wales. The questions are built as realistic client-based and ethical problems. They are designed to test principles a day-one solicitor can apply without reaching for a book, not the sort of detail that solicitor would look up. If you are memorising the precise numbering of every practice direction, you are probably overshooting. If you cannot decide whether the client has a cause of action, which track the claim should be on, or whether you may continue to act, you are undershooting.

Closed book means what it says. No statutes, no notes, no phone photographs of a flowchart. Pearson VUE will give you an erasable whiteboard notepad and marker for use during the assessment only. Those must be handed in at the end. You also get an online calculator. You may not bring your own equipment unless it is a listed comfort aid (for example non-electronic foam ear plugs) inspected at the centre.

The law cut-off, named authorities, and tax figures

Four calendar months before the first assessment in the window

The cut-off date for the law you are examined on is four calendar months prior to the date of the first assessment in an assessment window. You are tested on the law as it stands at that date. You are not tested on the historical development of the law. Changes that are implemented on that calendar date may be examined. Changes that commence the day after the cut-off are out.

Work a January window. If FLK1 is the first assessment in that window and it falls on, say, a Monday in January, count back four calendar months. A statutory change that took effect on the cut-off date is in. A reform that your undergraduate module still teaches as “coming soon” is only in if it had commenced by that date. A question that asks you to narrate how the common law got there is off-syllabus; a question that asks you to apply the current rule is on-syllabus.

The cut-off is tied to the first assessment in the window, not to the day you personally sit FLK2, and not to your booking date. FLK2 on the second day is still examining the same cut-off as FLK1.

When a name is the rule

The specification's legal-authorities paragraph is the one candidates misread. The default is that you are not required to recall specific case names or cite statutory or regulatory authorities. The exception is where, in practice, the case name or provision is the term normally used to describe the principle, the area of law, the rule, or the procedural step. The SRA's own examples are Rylands v Fletcher, CPR Part 36, and a section 25 notice. In those circumstances you must know the label and be able to use it.

That is a functioning-knowledge rule, not a trivia league. A newly qualified solicitor talking to a client about a dangerous escape from land will actually say “Rylands v Fletcher liability”, not “the nineteenth-century rule about non-natural user”. A solicitor discussing a tactical settlement offer will say “Part 36”, not “the civil procedure rule about offers that have costs consequences if beaten at trial”. Learn those labels because they are the rule. Do not build a flashcard deck of 400 House of Lords names that a day-one solicitor would look up.

Tax calculations

A question may require you to apply rules, rates, percentages, and thresholds to produce a figure. For taxation, you are expected to know that particular reliefs and exemptions exist and the conditions for using them. Where you must apply the monetary value of an exemption, relief, rate, or threshold, those figures will be provided. The trap is the opposite of citation panic: candidates either try to memorise every Finance Act band, or they freeze when a calculation appears. Know the structure (which tax, which relief, which condition). Use the figure the item gives you. Do not invent a threshold from memory if the stem has supplied one, and do not skip a tax item because you never sat LPC accounts — the calculator is on the screen and the rate is in the question.

Assessment day at a Pearson VUE centre

SQE1 does not have exclusive occupancy of Pearson VUE rooms. Other candidates will be sitting other tests of other lengths. Your report time is the time on your booking confirmation, which may differ from the person at the next desk. Arrive at that time, not at a time a forum post guessed.

A working timetable for one FLK day

Exact clock times vary. The shape of the day does not. The booking confirmation states the total length in minutes and includes the tutorial, declarations, both sessions, and the scheduled break.

The 50-minute return rule is the one that fails otherwise strong candidates. The diary says a 60-minute break. Re-registration and security take time. If you treat 60 minutes as time you may spend in a café two streets away, you can be locked out of 85 questions you have already paid for. Set a 45-minute alarm, walk back, and queue.

Unscheduled breaks are the other trap. Pearson VUE does not allow water at the workstation (spill risk and disruption). If you leave for water, the assessment timer continues. A five-minute queue for the toilet in Session 1 is five minutes of SBA time you will not get back. Plan hydration on the scheduled break, not in minute 40 of a 153-minute session, unless you have no choice.

You cannot leave early. Finishing Session 2 with 20 minutes to spare does not get you out of the room. Do not build a lift-share that assumes an early release.

Fit to Sit is a declaration that you are in a condition to attempt the assessment. If you are unwell at the workstation, the SRA's architecture is: declare honestly, sit or don't sit according to the policy, and use mitigating circumstances later if something arises during the paper. Confidentiality means you do not reconstruct items in a group chat that evening. Both declarations sit beside the Assessment Regulations; they are not decorative clicks.

Dress is whatever you can sit in for two long sessions, subject to security checks on bulky layers. Centres can feel cold or warm; layers are practical. Religious metal or magnetic items (for example a Kirpan) must be declared to Candidate Services before booking closes, not argued at the door.

Single-best-answer technique on SQE1 facts

SBA technique is not “spot the obviously illegal option”. Kaplan writes five options in which more than one can look right. Your job is to pick the option that a competent newly qualified solicitor would take on these facts.

Work this pattern (the facts are teaching facts, not a live SRA item):

A claimant has a sound contract claim. The defendant makes a CPR Part 36 offer. One option is a general statement of the law of consideration. Another is an accurate description of a different costs regime. A third is the procedurally correct next step under Part 36 on the dates in the stem. A fourth is a plausible but worse commercial response that ignores the Part 36 costs consequences. A fifth restates the client's goal without applying the rule. Several of those sentences could appear in a good undergraduate essay. Only one is the single best answer to the problem on the screen. Because CPR Part 36 is itself the name of the rule, you are expected to recognise that label and apply it. You are not expected to cite the paragraph number of a 2019 Court of Appeal illustration unless the specification has made that illustration the name of the rule — which it has not.

A second pattern uses Rylands v Fletcher. If the facts are about an escape of something likely to do mischief from a non-natural use of land, the best option may be the Rylands cause of action. A negligence option can be legally available on other facts and still be the worse characterisation here. “Both could be argued” is not a selectable mark. Choose the best fit.

A pacing method that respects 153 minutes

• 85 questions ÷ 153 minutes ≈ 1 minute 48 seconds each.
• Use a checkpoint: around question 42–43 you should still have about half the session left. If you are on question 30 with 40 minutes remaining, you are writing a commentary, not sitting SQE1.
• Flag and move. An ethics overlay on a business item can chew five minutes. Enter a provisional answer, flag it, and return only if time remains.
• Never leave a blank. No negative marking means a reasoned guess outperforms an empty selection.
• Read the last line of the stem first when you are overrunning — it often tells you whether the examiner wants the next procedural step, the cause of action, or the professional-conduct decision — then read the facts with that target in mind.
• Do not hunt for a trick in every option. Functioning legal knowledge rewards the solicitor-like answer, not the option that uses the most Latin.

What “several plausible answers” feels like on the day

Candidates used to four-option undergraduate MCQs often panic when two SQE1 options both cite real rules. That is the design. Ask: which option does the work the client needs now? An option that correctly states a remote limitation period is still wrong if the stem is about an imminent Part 36 deadline. An option that correctly states a money-laundering reporting instinct is still wrong if the facts have not reached the threshold and the best next step is a different SRA Standards duty. Ethics is pervasive, but it is not a sticker you glue onto every item at the expense of the actual question.

Official pages to re-read the week you sit: SQE1 Assessment Specification (closed book, cut-off, authorities, tax); SQE1 results and marking (five options, one mark, no negative marking, modified Angoff); and SQE1 assessment day (whiteboard, breaks, Fit to Sit, no early exit).