Every SQE1 cohort tells the same story. Candidates feel fine about contract and tort, nervous about business law — and genuinely frightened of three subjects: Wills and the Administration of Estates, Trusts, and Solicitors Accounts. Our full difficulty ranking puts the data behind that fear, and the FLK2 paper they all sit in has historically run behind FLK1 in pass rates (FLK1 vs FLK2).
Here is the practical follow-up question this post answers: what materials actually work for these three? Because the reason generic revision approaches fail on them is that each is hard in a different way — and the study guide that fixes one does nothing for another.
Why these three (and why generic materials underperform on them)
- Wills & Administration of Estates is hard through integration: succession law, intestacy rules, grant procedure and inheritance tax arithmetic all interlock in single questions.
- Trusts is hard through abstraction: the concepts (three certainties, resulting and constructive trusts, tracing) are unlike anything in everyday experience, and half-understood frameworks collapse under exam-style facts.
- Solicitors Accounts is hard through unfamiliarity: it is bookkeeping under the SRA Accounts Rules — a mechanical skill most law graduates have literally never practised.
Three different failure modes; three different demands on a study guide. Here is each, with what to look for in any series and what our own guide does.
Wills and Administration of Estates
Why candidates fail it: questions chain steps — validity, then intestacy interaction, then who takes the grant, then the IHT consequence. Know three steps out of four and the single best answer stays out of reach. The numbers matter too: current nil-rate bands and exemptions feed directly into right answers, which is exactly why out-of-date materials are most dangerous here.
What a good Wills guide must have:
- Worked IHT calculations — full arithmetic shown, current figures, not just rule statements.
- Intestacy flowcharts you can reproduce from memory — spouse-and-issue distributions are free marks if the sequence is automatic.
- Grant and administration procedure in timeline form — who applies, with what, in which order.
- Chained practice questions that integrate validity + intestacy + tax the way the exam does.
The options: the Revise SQE Wills guide is a solid print treatment (~£20–25; our series review covers the trade-offs). Our Wills and Administration of Estates study guide (£9.99) is built around exactly the four features above — 414 pages with 160 worked MCQs chained the way the exam chains them, and 360 flashcards for the rules and figures. Pair either with the free Wills revision guide on this blog for orientation.
Study tactic: revise Wills late enough to retain the figures but never last — it needs at least two passes with a fortnight between them.
Trusts Law
Why candidates fail it: Trusts punishes pattern-matching. Candidates memorise "the three certainties" as a list, then meet a fact pattern where intention is expressed in conduct, subject matter is part of a bulk, and the question turns on which certainty fails first. Without genuinely understood frameworks, every question feels novel.
What a good Trusts guide must have:
- Decision frameworks, not just rules — when do resulting trusts arise, in what order do you test a constructive trust claim, how does tracing actually proceed step by step.
- Diagrams of relationships — settlor, trustee, beneficiary, third parties; visual structure pays off here more than anywhere.
- Contrast tables — express vs resulting vs constructive; fixed vs discretionary; charitable requirements side by side.
- Graduated practice — single-concept questions first, then the multi-party fact patterns the exam loves.
The options: ULaw's manual gives maximum depth if you want £30-and-up course-grade treatment. Our Trusts Law study guide (£9.99, 632 pages) is framework-first with 220 worked MCQs graduated from single-concept to full scenarios and 444 flashcards; the free Trusts revision guide sketches the terrain first.
Study tactic: Trusts rewards early first contact — meet it in the first half of your plan so the abstractions have time to settle, then keep it alive with weekly flashcard passes (spaced repetition strategy).
Solicitors Accounts
Why candidates fail it: they read it. Accounts is the one SQE1 subject where understanding the prose and being able to answer the questions are almost unrelated. The exam asks: client money or business money? which entries, which ledgers? what happens with a mixed receipt? Those are reps, not reading.
Here is the reframe that changes everything: with only 8 topics and rules that never improvise, Accounts is the most learnable subject on the paper — the best marks-per-hour on FLK2 once you commit to drilling. Treated correctly it flips from feared to banked.
What a good Accounts guide must have:
- Ledger walk-throughs — double-entry shown line by line for every standard transaction, then practised.
- The SRA Accounts Rules mapped to transactions — not the rules in the abstract, but "a mixed receipt arrives: now what?"
- Volume of short drills — dozens of small entries questions, because automaticity is the entire game.
- The classic traps rehearsed — interest, transfers between client matters, disbursements, accountant's report triggers.
The options: the Revise SQE Accounts guide covers the rules well in print. Our Solicitors Accounts study guide (£9.99, 429 pages) is drill-built: 160 worked MCQs centred on ledger entries with every posting shown, plus 399 flashcards for the rules. The free Accounts revision guide explains the core distinctions to get you moving.
Study tactic: twenty minutes of entries, daily, from early in your plan. Accounts responds to frequency over duration like nothing else on the syllabus.
Buying strategy for the three
| Approach | Cost | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| Our three guides (Wills + Trusts + Accounts) | £29.97 | You are confident elsewhere and want the danger zone covered |
| All 13 subjects bundled | £49.99 | More than ~5 subjects need materials — the bundle beats singles from there |
| Print guides for these three from a publisher series | ~£60–75 | You annotate heavily and prefer paper for hard subjects |
If you are unsure which camp you are in, take the free readiness quiz first and let the per-subject results decide — buying materials before diagnosis is how revision budgets get wasted.
FAQ
Is Wills really the hardest SQE1 subject?
It is the most consistently reported hardest, and our difficulty ranking explains the integration problem behind that. But "hardest" is personal — accounts-phobic candidates fear Accounts more, and plenty of FLK1 candidates would nominate Business Law and Practice for sheer size (17 topics, the joint-largest on the exam).
How much time should these three get?
More than equal share: a sensible plan gives Wills, Trusts and Accounts roughly half as much time again as a typical mid-size subject, weighted by your own diagnostics. The hours guide shows total budgets to slice from.
Can I skip any of them and pass on the rest?
No. All 142 topics are examinable, the sample rotates, and FLK2 will put these three in front of you repeatedly. Strategic weighting is smart; strategic abandonment is how near-misses happen.
Do these subjects appear in both papers?
No — all three sit in FLK2, alongside Property Practice, Land Law and the criminal subjects. That concentration is precisely why FLK2 preparation needs the harder-subject materials in place early (FLK1 vs FLK2 strategy).
The bottom line
The three subjects that sink most candidates are hard in three different ways — integration, abstraction, unfamiliarity — and the right study guide for each is the one built for that failure mode: worked chains for Wills, frameworks for Trusts, drills for Accounts. Cover all three for £29.97, or the whole syllabus for £49.99 — and start with the one that scares you most, early, while there is time to make it boring.