Picture this. You are forty minutes into a practice paper, you hit a Dispute Resolution question, and it gives you a contract claim worth £42,000 with a hint of complexity. The question asks which track the court will allocate. You hesitate — was the fast track limit £25,000 or £100,000? Is £42,000 multi-track or intermediate? That single moment of doubt is exactly what SQE1 FLK1 tests. Not whether you can recite the rule, but whether you can apply it under time pressure.
Dispute Resolution sits inside FLK1 alongside Contract, Tort and the rest. It is heavily procedural, which makes it a gift for candidates who drill the steps and a trap for those who only read theory. Let me walk you through the parts that actually appear on the paper, and what you should do with each one.
Before the claim: limitation and pre-action conduct
Most Dispute Resolution questions start before a single court form is filed, and limitation is the silent killer. Under the Limitation Act 1980, a simple contract claim must be brought within six years from the date of breach. A tort claim is also six years, but it runs from the date damage is suffered. Personal injury is the exception you must memorise: three years from the date of injury or the claimant's date of knowledge, whichever is later.
Examiners love date arithmetic. They will give you a breach on, say, 3 March 2018 and ask whether a claim issued in April 2024 is statute-barred. Count carefully — six years from 3 March 2018 expires on 3 March 2024, so an April issue is too late. Always check whether the cause of action is contract, tort or personal injury, because the clock starts in different places.
Once you are inside the limitation window, the parties are expected to follow the Pre-Action Protocols and the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. The point of this stage is to encourage settlement and the exchange of information before litigation. A party who ignores the protocols without good reason risks costs sanctions even if it ultimately wins. Remember that the courts actively push alternative dispute resolution — mediation, negotiation, arbitration — and an unreasonable refusal to engage can be penalised on costs.
Exam habit to build: for every Dispute Resolution fact pattern, ask three questions in order — Is the claim in time? Which court? Which track? Get those right and half the answer options fall away.
Starting proceedings: court and the CPR tracks
Civil litigation in England and Wales runs on the Civil Procedure Rules. A claim begins with a claim form (Form N1) and particulars of claim. The defendant who wants to defend must respond — by filing an acknowledgement of service or a defence — generally within fourteen days of deemed service of the particulars. Miss that window and the claimant can apply for default judgment. That deadline is a classic SQE trip-wire, so lock it in.
After a defence is filed, the court allocates the case to a track based mainly on value and complexity. You must know the thresholds cold:
- Small claims track — generally up to £10,000 (lower for personal injury and certain housing claims). Costs recovery is very limited.
- Fast track — generally £10,000 to £25,000, with a trial expected to last no more than one day.
- Intermediate track — broadly £25,000 to £100,000 for less complex claims, with fixed recoverable costs applying.
- Multi-track — generally above £100,000, or any claim that is too complex for the lower tracks.
Notice why my opening £42,000 example matters. On the modern allocation rules that figure sits in the intermediate track, not the fast track, and definitely not the multi-track. Value alone is not the whole story though — complexity, number of parties and the likely trial length all feed in. Read the facts for those signals rather than reaching straight for the number.
Statements of case and the middle of the litigation
The documents that define the dispute are the statements of case: particulars of claim, defence, any counterclaim, and a reply. Each must be verified by a statement of truth. Sign one carelessly and you flirt with contempt of court, which is the sort of professional-conduct angle the SQE likes to weave into a procedural question.
Then comes disclosure. The standard position is that a party discloses documents which help or harm any party's case, subject to a reasonable search. Watch for privilege: legal advice privilege protects confidential communications between a client and lawyer for the purpose of legal advice, while litigation privilege covers communications whose dominant purpose is actual or contemplated litigation. A document does not stop being disclosable just because it is unhelpful — but a privileged document need not be shown to the other side. Candidates muddle these two ideas constantly, so practise spotting which is which.
On evidence, the general rule is that witnesses give factual evidence and experts give opinion evidence — but expert evidence is only admissible with the court's permission, and the expert's overriding duty is to the court, not to the party paying the bill. If a question hands you a partisan expert "fighting the client's corner", that is your cue.
Interim applications you must recognise
SQE Dispute Resolution questions frequently turn on an interim step. You do not need to draft the application, but you must recognise which one fits the facts:
- Summary judgment — where a claim or defence has no real prospect of success and there is no other compelling reason for a trial.
- Interim payment — an advance on damages the defendant is likely to be ordered to pay.
- Security for costs — protecting a defendant where, for example, a claimant company may be unable to pay an adverse costs order.
- Freezing injunction — restraining a party from dissipating assets before judgment.
- Strike out — where a statement of case discloses no reasonable grounds or is an abuse of process.
The trick is matching the remedy to the trigger words. "No realistic chance of defending" points to summary judgment. "Defendant moving money offshore" points to a freezing injunction. Build a mental lookup table and these questions become almost mechanical.
Costs, Part 36 and the sting in the tail
Costs are where Dispute Resolution gets genuinely strategic, and the examiners know it. The starting principle is that the unsuccessful party pays the successful party's costs — costs follow the event — but the court retains a wide discretion to depart from that, particularly where a party has behaved unreasonably or refused to mediate.
The single most tested costs topic is Part 36 offers. These are formal, written settlement offers with strict cost consequences. If a claimant makes a Part 36 offer and then beats it at trial, the court will usually order enhanced interest, indemnity costs from the end of the relevant period, and an additional amount. If a defendant makes a Part 36 offer and the claimant fails to beat it, the claimant typically pays the defendant's costs from the end of the relevant period, even though the claimant technically "won". That counter-intuitive result is precisely why it appears so often, so make sure you can trace the consequence from the perspective of both offeror and offeree.
A claimant can win the case and still lose on costs if they ignored a sensible Part 36 offer. If a question stresses that "the claimant recovered less than the defendant had offered", the answer is almost always about Part 36 cost shifting.
After judgment, do not forget enforcement. A judgment is only worth what you can collect. Know the main methods — taking control of goods (writs and warrants of control), third party debt orders, charging orders over land, and attachment of earnings. Questions sometimes run right to this final stage, asking which enforcement route best fits a debtor's particular assets.
How to revise Dispute Resolution efficiently
Theory alone will not carry you here. Do three things. Build a one-page timeline of a civil claim from pre-action protocol through to enforcement, and keep redrawing it from memory until it flows. Memorise the hard numbers — limitation periods, the track thresholds, the fourteen-day response window — because these are the facts examiners convert into trap answers. And practise as many Single Best Answer questions as you can, because Dispute Resolution rewards pattern recognition more than almost any other FLK1 subject.
When you review a wrong answer, do not just note the rule — write down why the wrong option looked tempting. That habit trains you to see the distractor before it catches you in the real two-paper SQE1 sitting.
If you would like structure around this, that is where we come in. The CELE SQE programme covers Dispute Resolution alongside all thirteen FLK subjects, with SQE1 courses ranging from £1,750 for the short-term option up to £3,720 for the long-term course, plus a single-FLK route at half price if you only need FLK1. Our SQE1 Question Bank (£575/month) is built to drill exactly the limitation, track and Part 36 patterns described above. When you reach the skills stage, the SQE2 course is £1,450 with 61 full mocks in the official SRA format. Find us at celebar.com, on WeChat SQE100, or email [email protected] — no pressure, just here when you need us.