Practice areas

The practice areas in which these legal skills are assessed are:

• Criminal Litigation (including advising clients at the police station)
• Dispute Resolution
• Property Practice
• Wills and Intestacy, Probate Administration and Practice
• Business organisations, rules and procedures (including money laundering and financial services).

Questions in these practice areas may draw on underlying black letter law in the Functioning Legal Knowledge (FLK) as follows:

• Criminal Litigation: Criminal liability
• Dispute Resolution: Contract law and tort
• Property Practice: Land law
• Wills and Intestacy, Probate Administration and Practice: Trusts
• Business organisations, rules and procedures: Contract law.

Professionalism and ethics will be core parts of SQE2. Questions on ethics will be pervasive throughout SQE2. Ethical issues will not be flagged, and candidates will need to identify any ethical and professional conduct issues and exercise judgment to resolve them honestly and with integrity.

Questions involving taxation may arise in Property Practice; Wills and Intestacy, Probate Administration and Practice; and Business organisations, rules and procedures.

Detail of the examinable content covered is given in Annex 1. Property Practice is under the headings freehold and leasehold real estate law and practice and core principles of planning law. Annex 1 is a sub-set of the FLK in SQE1. For the avoidance of doubt, the legal system of England and Wales, constitutional and administrative law and EU law, legal services (apart from money laundering and financial services), and solicitors’ accounts are not examined in SQE2. Money laundering and financial services are examinable in the context of business organisations, rules and procedures.

The cut-off date for the law upon which candidates are examined in the SQE will be four calendar months prior to the date of the first assessment in an assessment window. Candidates will be tested on the law as it stands at that date. They will not be tested on the development of the law.

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