Ethics and professional conduct SQE1 questions

What ethics and professional conduct covers in SQE1

The SRA's assessment specification for assessments from 1 September 2026 requires candidates to show they can act with honesty and integrity, in accordance with the SRA Standards and Regulations. It names three sets of rules:

• the purpose, scope and content of the SRA Principles;
• the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs, RFLs and RSLs, which questions refer to as the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors;
• the SRA Code of Conduct for Firms, as it applies to managers in authorised firms and to compliance officers.

Questions are based on realistic client problems, and the specification says these can include situations described in SRA warning notices, naming those on non-disclosure agreements and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). In practice the territory is conflicts of interest, confidentiality and disclosure, the duty to the court, undertakings, client care and costs information, referrals and financial benefits, reporting duties and equality obligations.

Where it sits in FLK1 and FLK2

Ethics has no paper, session or subject heading of its own. The specification says it will be "examined pervasively across the two assessments" and can be examined across all subject areas. From January 2027 each session covers a fixed group of subjects, and ethics can come up in any of them. A question on a litigation step may turn on a duty to the court, a question on a house purchase on acting for buyer and seller and a question on a police station interview on what a client has admitted.

The SRA says ethics and professional conduct and money laundering questions together can make up to 20 percent of the questions assessed, with money laundering in FLK1 only. Money laundering, financial services and the regulation of the profession are also part of Legal Services, which sits in FLK1 session 1.

In the SRA's annual report for 2023/24, ethics had the highest mean scaled score in both assessments, 362 in FLK1 and 354 in FLK2. Marks tend to be lost when the conduct point goes unnoticed inside a question about something else.

Where candidates go wrong

These are the traps that recur in the ethics questions in our bank.

• Consent used on an own interest conflict. Where a solicitor's own interests conflict with the client's, the solicitor must not act. Consent, a different fee earner or an information barrier are tools for other situations and do not cure this one.
• The client conflict exceptions stretched. Acting for two clients with a conflict is possible only where they have a substantially common interest or are competing for the same objective, and every condition is met, including informed consent given or evidenced in writing and effective safeguards. A family relationship between the clients does not satisfy the test.
• Confidentiality and disclosure treated as one duty. The duty to keep a client's affairs confidential and the duty to disclose material information to a client pull in opposite directions. Questions test which one gives way and when, and whether the solicitor can act at all.
• Instructions taken from the wrong person. Where instructions come from a relative, a company officer or another third party, the solicitor must be satisfied that they represent the client's wishes before acting on them.
• Undertakings and reports treated as formalities. An undertaking can arise from an informal email without the word undertake. A duty to report a serious breach to the SRA is not removed by putting the mistake right or by the absence of loss to the client.

How to revise ethics

Learn the seven SRA Principles and the rule on conflicts between them: where they conflict, those that protect the wider public interest take precedence over an individual client's interests. Then work through the Code for Solicitors section by section, learning each duty together with its exceptions, since most ethics questions are set at the edge of an exception.

Practise ethics inside the subjects rather than on its own. Conduct points in Dispute Resolution cluster around the duty to the court and witnesses, and in Business Law and Practice around acting for a company and its owners. Read the SRA's warning notices on non-disclosure agreements and SLAPPs, which the specification names.

Keep a list of the ethics questions you get wrong, with the duty each turned on, and return to it weekly. The SQE1 study plan builds that review into each week before your sitting.