Here is a question that trips up a lot of candidates in their first week of Land Law revision. Your client buys a registered freehold from a sole registered proprietor. On completion day she discovers the seller's partner living in the top-floor flat, having paid a third of the purchase price years earlier and never appeared on the register. Is your client bound?
Most people's instinct is "no — it wasn't on the register". That instinct is wrong, and the reason it is wrong sits at the heart of almost every Land Law question in SQE1 FLK2. Land Law is not really a memory subject. It is a subject about who binds whom, and the examiners test that relentlessly, in 1.8 minutes per question, with five plausible-looking options.
Land Law in SQE1 FLK2: where it sits and why it matters
Land Law is one of the six FLK2 subjects, sitting alongside Property Law and Practice, Trusts, Wills and the Administration of Estates, Solicitors Accounts and Criminal Law and Practice. From the January 2027 sitting, each FLK paper contains 170 single best answer questions across two sessions of 85, and subjects are grouped by session — Land Law appears in FLK2 Session 1 with Wills and the Administration of Estates, Solicitors Accounts and Trusts. That grouping is useful information for your revision plan: the doctrines you meet in Trusts (beneficial interests, trustees' powers) and in Land Law (trusts of land, overreaching) are being tested in the same half-day. Revise them together rather than in separate silos.
Ethics, as always, runs through everything. A Land Law fact pattern can quietly become a conflict of interest question when two co-owners want the same solicitor to act on a transfer.
Estates, interests and formalities: the foundations you cannot skip
Section 1 of the Law of Property Act 1925 allows only two legal estates — the freehold and the leasehold — and a short list of legal interests, including easements for a term equivalent to a legal estate, and charges by way of legal mortgage. Everything else can exist only in equity. Candidates who know that list cold can eliminate two wrong answers in seconds.
Formalities follow a predictable chain. A contract for the sale of land must be in writing, incorporate all expressly agreed terms and be signed by both parties (s.2 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989). The transfer itself must be by deed (s.52 LPA 1925), and a deed must be clear on its face that it is a deed, signed, witnessed and delivered (s.1 LP(MP)A 1989). A legal estate in registered land is then completed by registration under the Land Registration Act 2002.
The exceptions earn marks. A lease for three years or less, taking effect in possession at the best rent without a fine, can be created orally or in writing (s.54(2) LPA 1925). And a failed legal grant may still be a valid equitable interest: a written contract that complies with s.2 is specifically enforceable, so equity treats as done that which ought to be done — the rule in Walsh v Lonsdale.
Exam habit worth building: for every right in the facts, ask two questions before you look at the options. Is it legal or equitable? And has it been protected on the register (or registered as a land charge, in unregistered land)?
Co-ownership: joint tenancy, severance and disputes under TOLATA
Where two or more people own land, the legal title is always held as a joint tenancy on trust, and it cannot be severed. The action is all in the equitable title. Look for the four unities — possession, interest, title and time — and for express words of severance in the transfer.
Severance of an equitable joint tenancy converts it into a tenancy in common in equal shares, which matters enormously on death: a joint tenant's share passes by survivorship, a tenant in common's share passes under their will or intestacy. Written notice under s.36(2) LPA 1925 is the cleanest route, and it does not need to be received to be effective if properly served. The methods in Williams v Hensman — an act operating on one's own share, mutual agreement, and a course of dealing — cover the rest. Watch for the classic trap: a mutual will or a unilateral declaration alone will not sever.
Where the parties fall out, any trustee or person with an interest may apply to the court under s.14 of the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, and the court weighs the s.15 factors — the intentions of those who created the trust, the purposes for which the land is held, the welfare of any minor occupying it, and the interests of secured creditors. Where the legal title is in one name only and a partner claims a share, you are in common intention constructive trust territory, and the key authorities are Stack v Dowden and Jones v Kernott.
Easements and covenants: the third-party rights examiners love
Start every easement question with Re Ellenborough Park: there must be a dominant and a servient tenement, the right must accommodate the dominant tenement, the two must be owned or occupied by different people, and the right must be capable of forming the subject matter of a grant. A right to wander at will, or a claim that amounts to exclusive possession of the servient land, fails.
Then ask how it was acquired. Express grant or reservation in a deed is straightforward. Implied acquisition is where the marks are: necessity, common intention, the rule in Wheeldon v Burrows (quasi-easements that are continuous and apparent, necessary for the reasonable enjoyment of the land and used at the time of the transfer), and s.62 LPA 1925, which can upgrade a mere permission into a full easement on a conveyance. Prescription requires twenty years' user as of right — without force, without secrecy, without permission.
Covenants split along a hard line. The burden of a restrictive covenant can run in equity under Tulk v Moxhay provided it is negative in substance, taken to protect retained land, intended to run, and properly protected by notice. The burden of a positive covenant does not run at all at common law — Rhone v Stephens — although the mutual benefit and burden principle in Halsall v Brizell and the use of indemnity chains provide workarounds. On the benefit side, remember annexation under s.78 LPA 1925 (Federated Homes v Mill Lodge Properties), express assignment, and building schemes.
A practical drill: take any covenant in a question and rewrite it as "the buyer must not…" or "the buyer must…". If you can only express it as "must", the burden is positive, and the answer that says it binds a successor directly is almost certainly the distractor.
Priority rules: overreaching, overriding interests and land charges
Back to our opening scenario. The partner has a beneficial interest under a trust of land, and she is in actual occupation. Under Schedule 3, paragraph 2 of the LRA 2002, the interest of a person in actual occupation overrides a registered disposition — unless inquiry was made of that person and she failed to disclose the right, or her occupation was not obvious on a reasonably careful inspection and the buyer had no actual knowledge of it. That is Williams & Glyn's Bank v Boland in modern statutory dress, and yes, your client is likely bound.
The escape route is overreaching. Under ss.2 and 27 LPA 1925, if purchase money is paid to two trustees or a trust corporation, the beneficial interests are swept off the land and attach to the proceeds of sale — even where the beneficiaries are in occupation (City of London Building Society v Flegg). One trustee is not enough. That single fact — sole proprietor or two proprietors — decides the answer more often than any other detail in registered land questions.
Unregistered land still appears, so keep a short list ready. Under the Land Charges Act 1972, a puisne mortgage is Class C(i), an estate contract C(iv), a post-1926 restrictive covenant D(ii), an equitable easement D(iii), and home rights under the Family Law Act 1996 are Class F. Registration is against the estate owner's name, and failure to register makes the charge void against the relevant purchaser — motive is irrelevant, as Midland Bank Trust Co v Green shows. Rights outside the Act fall back on the doctrine of notice.
Leases, mortgages and a workable revision plan for FLK2
Two further blocks round out the syllabus. For leases, Street v Mountford gives you the test — exclusive possession for a certain term — and reminds you that labels do not decide the issue. A sham clause reserving a right to introduce other occupiers will not convert a lease into a licence. For leasehold covenants, note the dividing line at 1 January 1996 introduced by the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995. For mortgages, the lender's power of sale arises under s.101 LPA 1925 and becomes exercisable in the circumstances in s.103, and the lender must take reasonable care to obtain a proper price.
How should you actually revise this? Build one page of flowcharts rather than twenty pages of notes. One flowchart for registered land priority, one for unregistered, one for easement acquisition, one for covenant enforceability. Then do questions until the flowchart runs in your head without being drawn. Land Law rewards pattern recognition more than recall, and the only way to build patterns is volume with honest review of every wrong answer. Ask yourself after each one: did I misread the facts, or did I not know the rule? The two failures need very different fixes.
If a question gives you the number of registered proprietors, an occupier, and a date, it is testing priority. Nothing else. Answer it in that order: what is the right, is it legal or equitable, was it overreached, does it override?
How CELE SQE can help
We have been teaching SQE candidates since the very first sitting in 2021, and Land Law is one of the subjects where structured drilling makes the clearest difference. CELE SQE covers all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 — Long-term Course £3,720, Mid-term £2,750, Short-term £1,750, with single-FLK options at half those prices and £150 off for early bird or within-three-months-of-exam bookings. If you only need practice, the SQE1 Question Bank subscription is £575 per month, and textbooks are £950 for the full set or £570 for a single FLK set. Questions are welcome any time at [email protected], WeChat SQE100, or celebar.com — no pressure either way.
