Picture this. You are forty minutes into the FLK2 paper, you hit a question about two siblings who bought a house together, one has died, and the answer options all hinge on whether they held as joint tenants or tenants in common. Your stomach drops, because last time you revised survivorship you half-remembered it and moved on. Sound familiar? Land Law punishes the half-remembered. It rewards candidates who can map the facts onto a small number of rigid rules and apply them without hesitation.
This subject sits in SQE1 FLK2 alongside Property Practice, Trusts, Wills, Criminal Practice and Solicitor Accounts. It is conceptual rather than procedural, and the examiner loves testing whether you understand why an interest binds a buyer, not just whether it exists. Let me walk you through the parts that come up again and again.
Estates and Interests: The Land Law Foundation You Cannot Skip
Everything in Land Law builds on one distinction. Since the Law of Property Act 1925, only two legal estates can exist: the freehold (a fee simple absolute in possession) and the leasehold (a term of years absolute). Section 1(2) then lists the interests capable of being legal, including an easement granted for a term equivalent to a freehold or leasehold, and a legal charge. Anything that does not fit these boxes can only ever be equitable.
Why does this matter on exam day? Because the legal/equitable label drives the whole question. Legal rights have historically bound the world; equitable rights depend on doctrines of notice or, in registered land, on registration or an overriding interest. If you cannot classify the interest in the first ten seconds, you will guess the rest.
Practical drill: take any interest — a mortgage, an easement, a restrictive covenant, a lease — and ask two questions. Is it legal or equitable? How is it protected against a later buyer? If you can answer both instantly, you are FLK2-ready on that topic.
Co-ownership for FLK2: Joint Tenancy, Tenancy in Common and Survivorship
This is the topic that ambushes people, so slow down here. When two or more people own land, the legal title is always held on a trust of land, and the legal estate can only ever be held as a joint tenancy — never severed, maximum four trustees. The interesting action happens in equity, where co-owners hold either as joint tenants or tenants in common.
A joint tenancy requires the four unities: possession, interest, title and time. It carries the right of survivorship, meaning when one joint tenant dies their share passes automatically to the survivors, outside the will. A tenancy in common gives each owner a distinct, undivided share that does pass under their estate. So in that exam scenario about the deceased sibling, the entire answer turns on whether the equitable interest was a joint tenancy (the survivor takes all) or a tenancy in common (the deceased's share goes to their beneficiaries).
Now learn severance cold, because it is heavily examined. An equitable joint tenancy can be severed during life — for example by written notice under section 36(2) of the Law of Property Act 1925, by one tenant dealing with their share, or by mutual agreement or a course of dealing, as discussed in Williams v Hensman. Severance converts the joint tenancy into a tenancy in common. You cannot sever by will, because survivorship operates the instant before death takes effect. Get that timing point right and you will bank marks others lose.
Easements: The Four Hurdles and How They Are Created
Easements appear in almost every FLK2 sitting in some form. Start with the definition from Re Ellenborough Park. For a right to be an easement it must satisfy four requirements: there must be a dominant and a servient tenement; the right must accommodate (benefit) the dominant land; the two plots must be owned or occupied by different people; and the right must be capable of forming the subject matter of a grant. That last hurdle filters out vague claims — a right to a view, for instance, is too uncertain.
Creation is the part candidates muddle. Easements can be created expressly, by implication, or by prescription. Under implied grant you should know the rule in Wheeldon v Burrows, which converts certain quasi-easements into full easements on a sale of part, and section 62 of the Law of Property Act 1925, which can upgrade an informal permission into an easement on a conveyance. Prescription, broadly, rewards long use as of right — without force, secrecy or permission. Keep those three negatives in your head as "nec vi, nec clam, nec precario".
Watch the trap: a question often hands you a "right" that fails one Ellenborough limb, then asks how it binds a buyer. If it is not a valid easement at all, the binding question never arises. Always test validity before priority.
Freehold Covenants: Why the Burden Rarely Runs at Law
Covenants test your ability to separate benefit from burden, and law from equity. The benefit of a covenant can run at common law if it touches and concerns the land. The burden, though, does not run at law — that is the headline rule from Austerberry v Oldham Corporation, later confirmed by the House of Lords in Rhone v Stephens. So how does a restrictive covenant bind a later owner of the burdened land? Through equity, under the doctrine in Tulk v Moxhay, provided the covenant is restrictive (negative) in substance, it touches and concerns the land, the parties intended it to run, and it is properly protected by registration.
Examiners love positive covenants because the burden cannot run directly. You then have to reach for workarounds — a chain of indemnity covenants, or the mutual benefit and burden principle from Halsall v Brand. If a question shows a duty to do something (repair a fence, contribute to road upkeep), reach instinctively for "positive covenant, burden does not run, look for an indirect route".
Registered and Unregistered Land: Making an Interest Bind a Buyer
This is the priority engine of Land Law, and it is where many of the marks live. For registered land, the Land Registration Act 2002 governs. A registrable disposition for valuable consideration takes priority over earlier interests, except those protected by a notice on the register and those that override the register. The overriding interests in Schedule 3 are heavily tested — particularly a legal lease for seven years or less, and the interest of a person in actual occupation, the modern echo of Williams & Glyn's Bank v Boland.
In the shrinking pool of unregistered land, you apply the older system: legal rights bind the world, most equitable rights must be registered as land charges under the Land Charges Act 1972, and anything outside that scheme depends on the doctrine of notice. A puzzle here often hides a failure to register — a Class C(iv) estate contract or a Class D(ii) restrictive covenant that was never entered, and so is void against a buyer of a legal estate for money. Spot the missing registration and the answer falls out.
How to Revise Land Law for the SQE1 FLK2 Paper
Single Best Answer questions are not essays. They give you a tight set of facts and five plausible options, only one of which is best. So your revision should be structured around decision trees, not prose. For each topic build a one-page flowchart: classify the interest, test its validity, then resolve priority. Do that for easements, covenants, leases, mortgages and co-ownership, and you have covered most of what FLK2 will throw at you.
Two habits separate strong candidates from the rest. They learn the leading cases as triggers, not as quotations — you do not need the full ratio of Tulk v Moxhay, you need to recognise the moment it applies. And they practise under time pressure, because reading a dense factual scenario in under ninety seconds is its own skill. Mix Land Law questions in with Trusts and Property Practice, since the examiner deliberately overlaps them; a co-ownership dispute can quietly become a trusts-of-land question about occupation and sale.
Quick self-test before you close the book: name the two legal estates, the four unities, the four Ellenborough requirements, and the two routes by which a restrictive covenant burdens a buyer. If any answer is fuzzy, that is tonight's revision.
How CELE SQE can help
If you want Land Law mapped into clean decision trees with worked SBA practice, our SQE1 courses run from the Short-term Course at £1,750 up to the Long-term Course at £3,720, with a single-FLK option at half price if you only need FLK2. There is a £150 early-bird discount, and our SQE1 Question Bank is available at £575 per month for focused drilling. Come and find us at celebar.com or on WeChat SQE100 — we have been guiding candidates since the very first sitting, and we are happy to talk through where Land Law fits in your plan.