A candidate messaged us last month, four weeks out from her sitting, with a question that sounded simple: "If the claim is worth £60,000 and the trial will take two days, which track is it on, and does that change who pays the costs?" She had read the chapter twice. She still could not answer it under time pressure. That is the honest reality of Dispute Resolution in SQE1 FLK1 — the law is not conceptually hard, but the rules are dense, numerical and interlocking, and the exam tests whether you can move through them quickly.
This article deliberately skips the basic claim-form-to-judgment walkthrough. Instead we look at the areas that separate a comfortable pass from a near miss: allocation and costs consequences, interim applications, disclosure and privilege, and the settlement machinery of Part 36.
The CPR spine: why Dispute Resolution questions are really process questions
Every Dispute Resolution question in FLK1 sits somewhere on a timeline. Before you read the options, ask yourself where on that timeline the facts have landed. Pre-action? Post-issue but pre-service? After a defence has been filed? Post-allocation? The answer usually narrows five options down to two.
Anchor everything to the overriding objective in CPR 1.1 — dealing with cases justly and at proportionate cost. That principle is not decorative. It explains why courts limit disclosure, restrict expert evidence, and penalise parties who ignore the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols. When a question offers you an answer that is technically available but wildly disproportionate to a £15,000 claim, that is usually the trap.
Limitation deserves its own flashcard set. Six years for contract (s.5 Limitation Act 1980) and for tort where damage is the gateway (s.2), running from breach in contract but from damage in negligence. Three years for personal injury under s.11, running from the date of the accident or the claimant's date of knowledge, with the court's discretion to disapply under s.33. Latent damage cases bring in s.14A. Examiners love a claimant who instructed solicitors five years and eleven months after a building defect appeared.
Quick check before you answer any procedural MCQ: (1) which court and division, (2) what stage are we at, (3) what is the time limit, (4) what is the sanction for missing it? Four questions, about fifteen seconds, and it works on the majority of Dispute Resolution items.
Track allocation for SQE1: four tracks, not three
A lot of older revision material still describes three tracks. Since October 2023 there are four, and FLK1 candidates need the current picture.
The small claims track is the normal track for claims with a value not exceeding £10,000, with lower thresholds in personal injury (broadly £1,000 for pain, suffering and loss of amenity, with a separate figure for road traffic whiplash claims). The fast track covers claims above the small claims limit up to £25,000 where the trial is likely to last no more than one day. The intermediate track now takes less complex claims valued between £25,000 and £100,000 where trial is likely to last no more than three days. Anything above that, or anything genuinely complex, goes to the multi-track.
So the £60,000, two-day claim in our candidate's question is presumptively intermediate track — and yes, that changes the costs position substantially, because fixed recoverable costs now apply across most fast track and intermediate track claims, with the intermediate track using complexity bands. On the multi-track, by contrast, you are into costs budgeting and Precedent H territory.
Value alone does not decide allocation. CPR 26 requires the court to consider the nature of the remedy, complexity of facts and law, the number of parties, the volume of oral evidence and the circumstances of the parties. Remember also that allocation follows the filing of directions questionnaires, and that the court can allocate to a higher track than the value suggests if the case demands it.
Which court, which division?
Practice Direction 7A is the shortcut: money claims for less than £100,000 (and personal injury claims for less than £50,000) must be started in the County Court. The High Court divides into the King's Bench Division, the Chancery Division and the Family Division. Contract and tort disputes generally sit in the King's Bench Division; trusts, probate, land and company disputes in Chancery. Get this right in a heartbeat — it is the kind of one-line fact that appears as a distractor filter.
Interim applications: the highest-yield corner of FLK1 Dispute Resolution
Interim applications generate a lot of exam questions because they combine a legal test with a procedural mechanism. The mechanism is CPR Part 23: an application notice (Form N244), evidence in support, and a draft order, served (as a general rule) at least three clear days before the hearing.
Learn these tests as verbatim as you can:
- Summary judgment — the respondent has no real prospect of succeeding on or defending the claim or issue, and there is no other compelling reason for a trial. Swain v Hillman [2001] confirms "real" means realistic, not fanciful; the court does not conduct a mini-trial.
- Default judgment — available where the defendant has failed to file an acknowledgment of service or defence in time. Setting aside is mandatory under CPR 13.2 where judgment was wrongly entered, and discretionary under CPR 13.3 where the defendant has a real prospect of successfully defending or there is some other good reason. Applications under 13.3 must be made promptly.
- Interim injunctions — American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd [1975] AC 396: a serious issue to be tried, adequacy of damages, and the balance of convenience, with the status quo as a tie-breaker. Note the cross-undertaking in damages.
- Security for costs — jurisdictional gateways in CPR 25.13 plus the overall requirement that it is just to make the order.
- Interim payments — the conditions in CPR 25.7, including admission of liability or a likelihood of obtaining judgment for a substantial sum.
Then there is relief from sanctions. If a party misses a deadline that carries an automatic sanction, CPR 3.9 and Denton v TH White Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 906 apply: is the breach serious or significant; why did it occur; and, considering all the circumstances, should relief be granted so the case can be dealt with justly and at proportionate cost? Candidates routinely lose marks by picking an answer that treats a trivial delay as fatal, or a wholesale failure to serve witness evidence as forgivable.
Disclosure, privilege and expert evidence
Standard disclosure under CPR 31.6 requires a party to disclose the documents on which it relies, documents which adversely affect its own case, documents which adversely affect another party's case, and documents which support another party's case. Read that list again — the third and fourth limbs are the ones students merge. There is also the duty to conduct a reasonable and proportionate search (CPR 31.7), and the continuing nature of the obligation.
Privilege is where questions get genuinely testing. Legal advice privilege protects confidential communications between lawyer and client for the purpose of giving or receiving legal advice. Litigation privilege is wider in subject matter but narrower in trigger: the communication must be made for the dominant purpose of litigation which is in progress or reasonably in contemplation, and it can cover communications with third parties, such as an accident investigator. Three Rivers District Council v Bank of England (No 6) [2004] UKHL 48 is the case to name. Separately, without prejudice communications made in a genuine attempt to settle are not admissible, though "without prejudice save as to costs" correspondence can be shown to the court on costs.
On expert evidence, remember that no party may call an expert or put in a report without the court's permission (CPR 35.4), and that the expert's overriding duty is to the court, not to the party paying the bill (CPR 35.3). On lower-value claims a single joint expert is the norm. If a question mentions two orthopaedic surgeons in a £12,000 claim, be suspicious.
Part 36, costs and ADR: where the money actually moves
The general rule on costs is that the unsuccessful party pays the successful party's costs (CPR 44.2), but the court can depart from it — conduct, exaggeration, and partial success all matter. Know the difference between the two bases of assessment: on the standard basis, costs must be proportionate and any doubt is resolved in favour of the paying party; on the indemnity basis, proportionality does not apply and doubt favours the receiving party.
Part 36 offers are the classic FLK1 calculation question. A valid offer specifies a relevant period of at least 21 days. If a claimant fails to obtain a judgment more advantageous than a defendant's Part 36 offer, the usual consequence is that the claimant pays the defendant's costs from the end of the relevant period, plus interest on those costs. If a claimant obtains a judgment at least as advantageous as its own offer, the court will normally order indemnity costs from the end of the relevant period, enhanced interest of up to 10% above base rate, and an additional amount calculated as a percentage of the sum awarded, subject to a cap. Do not try to memorise the arithmetic the night before — work through five past-style problems until the pattern feels automatic.
Alternative dispute resolution has moved on, and your revision notes should reflect that. Halsey v Milton Keynes General NHS Trust [2004] EWCA Civ 576 still supplies the factors for judging whether a refusal to mediate was unreasonable, but Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council [2023] EWCA Civ 1416 confirmed that the court may lawfully stay proceedings and order parties to engage in non-court-based dispute resolution, provided the order does not impair the right to a judicial hearing and is proportionate. The CPR were subsequently amended to put the court's power to order ADR beyond argument.
What to actually do in your last few weeks
Reading the chapter again will not fix a timing problem. Try this instead.
- Build a single-page timeline card: acknowledgment of service 14 days from service of particulars; defence 14 days, or 28 days if an acknowledgment has been filed; claim form valid for service for four months (six months out of the jurisdiction). Rewrite it from memory every third day.
- Make a numbers sheet: track thresholds, trial length limits, the £100,000/£50,000 PD 7A figures, the three clear days for Part 23, the 21-day relevant period. Numbers are the cheapest marks in FLK1.
- Practise "which application?" drills. Give yourself a fact pattern and choose between summary judgment, strike out, default judgment, interim payment and security for costs in under twenty seconds.
- Do mixed-subject question sets. Dispute Resolution questions in the real paper arrive next to Contract and Tort items, not in a tidy block, and switching costs are real.
- Always read the last line of the stem first. "Which of the following best describes the court's likely order?" and "What advice should the solicitor give?" call for different reasoning.
Remember the shape of the assessment while you plan: SQE1 is two papers, FLK1 and FLK2, each containing 180 single best answer questions with five hours and twenty minutes per paper. That is roughly 89 seconds per question. Procedure has to be recall, not reconstruction.
How CELE SQE can help
We have taught SQE candidates since the very first sitting in 2021, and Dispute Resolution is one of the subjects where structured drilling makes the clearest difference. Our SQE1 courses cover all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 — Long-term £3,720, Mid-term £2,750, Short-term £1,750, with single-FLK options at half those prices and £150 off for early bookings or bookings within three months of your exam. If you simply need volume, the SQE1 question bank subscription is £575 per month, and the full textbook set is £950 (£570 for a single FLK). Questions? WeChat SQE100, [email protected], or celebar.com — no pressure, we are happy just to point you in the right direction.