Candidates who trained in a civil law system, and are studying in a second language, tend to report the same pattern when asked what caught them off guard in SQE1.
Contract and tort usually feel familiar early on, since most civil law systems have something equivalent to both, and the underlying logic carries across. That is rarely where candidates lose time.
Trusts is the subject that catches people out most. It does not exist the way common law built it, and it resurfaces inside land law, wills, and parts of business law once the basics are covered. Land law brings its own unfamiliar territory, registered title, overriding interests, and how completion actually works, none of which has a direct equivalent in most civil law systems. Solicitors accounts is less about law and more a set of operational rules for handling client money, so candidates without a common law background often have nothing in their own training to compare it to.
Dispute resolution, court structure, and constitutional and administrative law are usually new too, but they sit inside FLK1 alongside contract and tort, so there is at least something familiar on the same paper. FLK2 is where trusts, land law, and solicitors accounts land together, which is why it tends to be the harder paper for this group of candidates.
The language layer compounds all of this. Often the problem is not the underlying law, it is the wording. Each SQE1 question has five options, and under time pressure, all five can look plausible if a question is read slightly wrong. Timed practice in English, done early, tends to help more than an additional textbook chapter.
SQE Cracker's own founder trained in a civil law system and sat SQE1 in July 2025. This list, trusts, land law, solicitors accounts, and exam wording under time pressure, is the one he wishes someone had handed him before he started, which is part of why those areas get particular attention in the platform's cheat sheets.