A candidate emailed us last month with a question that had cost her two marks in a mock. A long-standing commercial client asks the firm to act on the sale of a warehouse. The buyer — a smaller company, also a client of three years' standing — asks the same firm to act for it. Both companies say they trust the firm, both want the deal done quickly, and both are happy to sign whatever is needed. Can the firm act for both?
Her instinct was "yes, with informed written consent". The best answer was no. Buyer and seller negotiating price and terms are not clients with a substantially common interest, and they are not competing for the same objective in the technical sense the Code uses. That single distinction is the difference between a mark and a blank.
This is Legal Services in a sentence: a small subject on paper, a subject that decides a surprising number of marks in practice — because ethics is pervasive across the whole of SQE1, and turns up dressed as a Business Law question, a Dispute Resolution question, or a Property question when you least expect it.
Why Legal Services carries more weight in FLK1 than its size suggests
Legal Services is one of the seven FLK1 subjects, alongside English Legal System, Contract, Business Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution, Tort, and Constitutional and Administrative Law and EU Law. It looks like the lightest of the seven. It isn't, because the SRA treats ethics and professional conduct as pervasive: a question about a litigation deadline can turn on whether you may mislead the court; a company question can turn on who your client actually is when the board is split.
From the January 2027 sitting, each FLK paper contains 170 single best answer questions across two sessions of 85, with 2 hours 33 minutes per session — roughly 1.8 minutes per question. Subjects are grouped by session: Legal Services sits in FLK1 Session 1 with Business Law and Practice and Dispute Resolution. That grouping is useful. It means your Legal Services revision should be woven into your business and litigation work rather than parked in a separate folder you open twice.
Ethics remains pervasive under the specification. Treat every scenario with a named client, a deadline and a sum of money as a potential conduct question, whichever subject it appears to belong to.
SRA Principles and the Codes of Conduct: what examiners test
Start with the seven SRA Principles: upholding the rule of law and the proper administration of justice; upholding public trust and confidence in the solicitors' profession and in legal services provided by authorised persons; independence; honesty; integrity; encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion; and acting in the best interests of each client. Learn the order loosely and the substance precisely. Where Principles conflict, those safeguarding the wider public interest — the rule of law, public trust — take precedence over an individual client's interests. Exam questions engineer exactly that clash.
Then the two Codes: the Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs, which binds you personally, and the Code of Conduct for Firms. A recurring trap is asking who is in breach — the individual, the firm, or both. If a supervision system has failed across several matters, look at the firm's Code as well as the fee earner's conduct.
A handful of obligations produce disproportionate numbers of questions. You do not mislead the court or attempt to do so, and you do not allow the court to be misled (paragraph 2.4 of the Solicitors' Code). You perform undertakings within the agreed timescale, or within a reasonable time if none was agreed. You do not abuse your position by taking unfair advantage of clients or others. And you report to the SRA facts or matters you reasonably believe should be brought to its attention so it can investigate.
The classic own interest conflict
Own interest conflicts are an absolute prohibition — no consent cures them. The solicitor who wants to buy the client's property, who is named as a beneficiary in the will they are drafting, or whose firm would collect a referral fee from the lender: all fall here. A client conflict is different. You may act where clients have a substantially common interest, or where they are competing for the same objective (think two bidders at auction for the same asset), provided you have informed written consent, effective safeguards for confidential information, and you are satisfied it is reasonable to act. Buyer and seller negotiating terms fit neither exception — which is why the warehouse answer was no.
Confidentiality, disclosure and the tension between them
Confidentiality survives the retainer and survives the client's death. The duty of disclosure is owed only to a current client, and only in relation to material information of which you are aware. When the two collide, confidentiality wins: you may not disclose client A's confidential information to client B, and if you cannot act for B without it, you decline or cease to act unless the conditions in paragraph 6.5 — effective safeguards and informed consent — are met.
Know the narrow escape routes: disclosure required or permitted by law, and disclosure with the client's consent. Legal professional privilege is a separate concept — a rule of evidence protecting communications from disclosure to third parties and the court — and questions reward candidates who keep the two apart. Privilege does not attach to communications made in furtherance of a crime or fraud.
Money laundering and financial services: the compliance corner of Legal Services
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the principal offences are concealing (s.327), entering into or becoming concerned in an arrangement (s.328) and acquisition, use or possession (s.329). Conveyancing and corporate work sit squarely in s.328 territory. A solicitor in the regulated sector also commits an offence under s.330 by failing to disclose where there are reasonable grounds to suspect money laundering — subject to the legal professional privilege exemption. Tipping off under s.333A is the other favourite: telling the client a suspicious activity report has been made, in terms likely to prejudice an investigation.
Practically, the sequence examiners want is: suspicion arises, report internally to the firm's nominated officer (MLRO), authorised disclosure to the National Crime Agency, and wait for appropriate consent before proceeding. The Money Laundering Regulations 2017 supply the preventative architecture — client due diligence, enhanced due diligence for higher-risk situations, ongoing monitoring, record-keeping and training.
Financial services questions are shorter and often easier than candidates expect. The general prohibition in s.19 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 bars carrying on a regulated activity in the UK without authorisation or exemption. Most solicitors rely on the Part 20 exemption for members of a designated professional body, with the SRA Financial Services (Scope) Rules and the exclusions in the Regulated Activities Order doing the heavy lifting. Ask yourself the same four questions each time: is there a specified investment, a specified activity, by way of business, and does an exclusion or exemption apply?
Funding, client care and costs information
Funding is where Legal Services shakes hands with Dispute Resolution. Know the options and their limits: private retainers and fixed fees; conditional fee agreements under s.58 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, where the success fee is capped at 25% of specified damages in personal injury claims and is not recoverable from the losing party; damages-based agreements under s.58AA; before-the-event and after-the-event insurance; trade union funding; third-party funding; and the narrowed scope of civil legal aid under LASPO 2012. LASPO also banned referral fees in personal injury cases.
On client care, paragraph 8.6 requires the best possible information about how the matter will be priced and about the likely overall cost, both at engagement and as the matter progresses. Costs questions rarely ask you to recite the rule. They ask whether a solicitor who quoted an estimate in January and said nothing while costs tripled by June has complied. She hasn't.
Complaints handling is examinable too: clients must be told at engagement about their right to complain, how to do so, and their right to take an unresolved complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, broadly within six months of the firm's final response and within a year of the problem arising or of when they should reasonably have known about it.
Regulation: the Legal Services Act 2007 framework
Memorise the six reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007: exercising a right of audience; conducting litigation; reserved instrument activities; probate activities; notarial activities; and the administration of oaths. Notice what is absent — general legal advice, will drafting, immigration and employment advice are not reserved. Questions about unregulated providers turn on that list.
Keep the bodies straight: the Legal Services Board oversees the approved regulators; the SRA regulates solicitors and firms; the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal hears the serious cases and can strike off; the Legal Ombudsman handles service complaints, not misconduct. A question about rudeness and delay is an Ombudsman question. A question about dishonesty is an SRA and SDT question.
Three things to do this week
Build a one-page decision tree for conflicts and confidentiality, and use it on every practice question until you stop reaching for it. Second, when you do Business Law or Dispute Resolution questions, write "ethics?" in the margin of any scenario involving a deadline, a payment or a third party, and see how often the answer changes. Third, practise timing: at about 1.8 minutes a question, conduct scenarios must be read once, carefully, not twice, anxiously. Which distractor looks professionally tidy but breaches an absolute prohibition? That is usually the one the examiner planted.
How CELE SQE can help
We have taught every SQE sitting since 2021, and our courses cover all 13 subjects across FLK1 and FLK2 with ethics threaded through the other twelve rather than bolted on at the end. The SQE1 Long-term Course is £3,720, the Mid-term £2,750 and the Short-term £1,750, with a single FLK at half those prices and £150 off for early bookings or bookings within three months of your exam; the question bank alone is £575 per month. If you are already looking ahead, the SQE2 course is £1,450 and includes 61 full mock questions built to the official SRA format. Questions about which route suits your timetable? WeChat SQE100, [email protected], or celebar.com.
