Business Law and Practice SQE1 questions

What Business Law and Practice covers in SQE1

The SRA's specification for assessments from 1 September 2026 divides Business Law and Practice into two parts. The first is business organisations, rules and procedures:

• the characteristics, legal personality and limited liability of sole traders, partnerships, LLPs, and private and unlisted public companies;
• incorporation and formation, constitutional documents and Companies House filing requirements;
• finance: debt and equity, including the redemption and buyback of shares, types of security, distribution of profits, and financial records;
• corporate governance: the rights, duties and powers of directors and shareholders, decision-making and meetings, appointment and removal of directors, and minority shareholder protection;
• partnership decision-making and the authority of partners under the Partnership Act 1890;
• corporate and personal insolvency: the procedures, clawback of assets for creditors, and the order of priority.

The second is business taxation: income tax, capital gains tax, corporation tax, VAT, and business property relief from inheritance tax. The Listing Rules and other FCA and London Stock Exchange rules are excluded, as are reductions of share capital other than redemption and buyback, and financial assistance.

Where it sits in FLK1

From January 2027 each FLK is sat as two sessions of 85 questions, each covering a fixed group of subjects. BLP is in FLK1 session 1 with Dispute Resolution and Legal Services, and questions are randomised within the session. In the SRA's 2019 blueprint, the only version published in full, BLP makes up 14 to 20 percent of FLK1.

Ethics can arise in any BLP question, for example when a solicitor is asked to act for a company and one of its directors. The law examined in January 2027 is the law in force on 11 September 2026, which matters for company filing rules while the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 is brought into force in stages.

Where candidates go wrong

In the SRA's annual report for 2023/24, BLP had a mean scaled score of 279, one of the two lowest in FLK1. The traps that recur in our question bank are about thresholds and who decides.

• Board or members. Many acts need shareholder approval however united the board is: a substantial property transaction with a director, a director's service contract guaranteed for more than two years, a change to the articles or the company name.
• Resolution arithmetic. An ordinary resolution needs a simple majority and a special resolution 75 percent. On a show of hands the count is of votes cast, on a poll it is of the voting rights of the members who vote, and on a written resolution it is of the total voting rights of all eligible members, whether or not they reply. Counting heads when the question describes a poll is a common slip.
• Time limits from the wrong procedure. Special notice of 28 days to remove a director, 14 days' notice of a general meeting of a private company, and the six-month and two-year lookback periods for preferences are all real rules. Each belongs to one procedure only.
• Cash and distributable profits. A company may pay a dividend only out of profits available for distribution.
• Tax order. Income tax is charged on non-savings, then savings, then dividend income, and brought-forward capital losses are used only as far as needed to bring gains down to the annual exempt amount.

How to revise Business Law and Practice

Build a decision table first: for each common corporate act, who decides (the board, an ordinary or special resolution, or the court) and what must be filed at Companies House afterwards. Many BLP questions are that table set out as a client scenario.

Learn insolvency as a sequence: the procedures and who can start them, what a liquidator or administrator can recover, and the order in which creditors are paid, including the prescribed part set aside for unsecured creditors from floating charge realisations.

For tax, the paper now supplies rates and thresholds, so practise the calculations with the figures given and learn the conditions for each relief by heart. The SQE1 tax calculator works through income tax and capital gains tax line by line.

Partnership law turns on a few rules: the default terms in the Partnership Act 1890, a partner's authority to bind the firm, and liability for the firm's debts.

BLP shares session 1 with Dispute Resolution, so the two sit well together in the final weeks. The SQE1 study plan sets out those weeks from your sitting date.