Short answer: Eight weeks is enough for January 2027 if two things are true: you can give it 35 to 40 hours a week, or you have already covered the syllabus once and can give 20 hours a week to questions and mocks. Start on Monday 16 November 2026, run the eight weeks to Sunday 10 January, sit FLK1 in the week of 11 January and FLK2 in the week of 18 January. The plan below is built on the January 2027 paper: two sessions of 85 questions, with fixed subjects in each session, so every week revises the subjects that will be tested together and every mock is a real two-session rehearsal. If you have twelve weeks, use the 12-week plan instead; if you have four, the 4-week sprint.
Who this plan is for
The January 2027 calendar creates an eight-week candidate. Seat reservation forms went out on 22 September, but the SRA's payment requests run from 19 October to 18 November, each with a 48-hour window, and the last seats go on direct booking from 19 to 23 November, when booking closes. A candidate who confirms a seat in the middle of that window has eight weeks to the first paper; one who books on 23 November has seven. The dates and deadlines guide has the full calendar and the booking guide the steps.
Eight weeks is short. The hours guide puts the preparation most candidates need at around 300 to 400 hours, and eight weeks at 40 hours is 320. That is a full-time job of study, and it is the honest requirement for a first-time candidate starting from a law degree or a conversion course. Three groups can make it work on fewer hours:
- Resitters who sat in July 2026 and have a score report to work from. Your first pass is done; the January 2027 resit plan is the longer version of this, and the weeks below assume you skip most of the reading.
- Candidates who studied earlier in the year and stopped. The knowledge is there; what has gone is retrieval speed, which questions restore fast.
- Course candidates whose provider covered the content by November and who now need a revision structure rather than teaching.
If none of those describes you and you cannot find 35 hours a week, the six-month plan for July 2027 is the better decision, and the SRA's fee of £2,006 is a strong argument for making it now rather than on results day.
The paper you are planning for
From January 2027 each SQE1 paper has 170 questions in two sessions of 85, 2 hours 33 minutes each, with a 60-minute break. The subjects are fixed per session:
| Paper | Session 1 | Session 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FLK1 (from 11 January) | Business law and practice, dispute resolution, legal services | Contract, tort, legal system (with constitutional, administrative and EU law) |
| FLK2 (from 18 January) | Wills and administration of estates, trusts, land law, solicitors accounts in its wills context | Property practice, criminal liability, criminal law and practice, solicitors accounts in its property context |
Ethics and professional conduct runs through every session. The January 2027 changes post has the SRA's weightings; what matters for planning is that each session is a self-contained set of three or four subjects, and the plan revises them as sets.
The eight weeks
Hours are for the full-time version. The bracketed figure is the minimum for a candidate whose first pass is already done.
| Week | Dates | Focus | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 to 22 Nov | FLK1 session 1: business, dispute resolution, legal services | 40 (20) |
| 2 | 23 to 29 Nov | FLK1 session 2: contract, tort, legal system | 40 (20) |
| 3 | 30 Nov to 6 Dec | FLK2 session 1: wills, trusts, land, solicitors accounts | 40 (20) |
| 4 | 7 to 13 Dec | FLK2 session 2: property practice, criminal liability, criminal practice; first full FLK1 paper on Saturday | 40 (22) |
| 5 | 14 to 20 Dec | Question-led consolidation across both papers, weakest subjects first | 38 (20) |
| 6 | 21 to 27 Dec | Reduced week: flashcards, ethics, the two weakest subjects; no mock | 20 (12) |
| 7 | 28 Dec to 3 Jan | Mock cycle: full FLK1 and full FLK2 in two sessions each, with reviews | 38 (22) |
| 8 | 4 to 10 Jan | FLK1 taper: session-by-session rehearsal, error log, sleep | 30 (18) |
| FLK1 week | 11 to 17 Jan | Sit FLK1; then FLK2 questions only, one session a day | 25 (15) |
| FLK2 week | 18 to 22 Jan | Sit FLK2 |
Weeks 1 to 4: one session per week
Each of the first four weeks takes one exam session as its unit. Monday to Thursday cover the session's subjects in proportion to their weighting (each of the main subjects is 14% to 20% of its paper, legal services 12% to 16%), reading notes and working topic-level question sets, with the revision checklist ticked as you go. Friday is a mixed set of 85 questions drawn only from that session's subjects, timed at 2 hours 33 minutes, which is exactly what you will meet in January. Saturday reviews every wrong option from Friday; Sunday is off or flashcards only.
FLK1 comes first in the plan because it comes first in January. Week 3 and week 4 cover FLK2, which has had the lower pass rate in every sitting since 2021 (57% against 62% for FLK1 in January 2026, on the pass-rates hub), so if you are ahead by week 3, give the extra to FLK2 session one: wills, trusts and land carry more marks per hour of revision than any other group on the syllabus, and the hardest subjects ranking explains why.
On the Saturday of week 4 sit the first full FLK1 paper: two sessions of 85 with a 60-minute break, no notes, both sessions on the same day. Score it by session and by subject. A candidate on 60% or more is on track; below 50% in either session, the decision framework in the mock decoder applies before you plan week 5.
Week 5: questions, weakest first
Week 5 has no new content. Rank the thirteen subjects by your week-four and Friday scores and work upward from the bottom: a full topic set for every topic in your two weakest subjects, then the next two, with the explanations read for every option. The high-yield topics list tells you which topics inside each subject to weight, and the MCQ technique guide is worth an hour on Monday if your errors are pattern errors rather than knowledge gaps.
Week 6: the Christmas week
Week 6 runs from 21 to 27 December: Christmas Day falls on the Friday and the Boxing Day bank holiday is observed on Monday 28 December. Plan 20 hours, not 40, and make them retrieval hours: flashcards on the spaced repetition schedule, the ethics and professional conduct rules that appear in every session, and short daily sets on your two weakest subjects. No full mock this week. A plan that assumes a normal Christmas fails in the second week of January; one that plans for a light week holds.
Week 7: the mock cycle
Two full papers in the two-session structure, on separate days: FLK1 on Tuesday 29 December, FLK2 on Saturday 2 January, each followed the next day by a full review of every question you got wrong or guessed. This is the week the free mock guide is written for. Sit them at the time of day your report time will be, with the 60-minute break and nothing at the desk: the exam centre allows no water, no watch and no notes in the room, and the timer keeps running if you leave. Score by session. The gap between your two sessions on the same paper tells you which subject group needs week 8.
Week 8: the FLK1 taper
FLK1 is first, so week 8 is FLK1. Monday and Tuesday are one session each, timed, on the subject groups: session-one subjects on Monday, session-two subjects on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday work the error log from every mock so far, topic by topic, and Friday is a final short set on your weakest FLK1 subject. Saturday and Sunday are the rest days the exam-day guide argues for; the confirmation email, the route to the centre and the ID check are Saturday's only jobs.
The FLK1 week
After FLK1, do not open FLK1 material again. There is a week to the FLK2 paper, and the plan gives it one FLK2 session a day: session-one subjects on Tuesday, session-two subjects on Wednesday, a full two-session FLK2 paper on Thursday, review on Friday, weakest subject on Saturday, rest on Sunday. FLK2 is the paper more candidates fail, and this is the week that decides it.
The daily rhythm at 40 hours
Forty hours in a week is eight hours on five days, or six and a half on six. The pattern that survives eight weeks is the same one the 12-week plan uses: a morning block of reading or notes on one subject, an afternoon block of questions on that subject, and a short evening block of flashcards on a different subject, so every day touches two subjects and every week touches every subject in the session. Finish each day by logging every wrong answer with the rule you missed, not the question, and start the next day by rereading yesterday's log. The revision timetable template has the grid.
At 20 hours a week the same shape halves: reading is cut to the topics you scored under 60% on, and everything else is questions.
If you fall behind
- Behind after week 2: drop the Saturday reviews to two hours and move the lost content into week 5, which has no new content of its own.
- Behind after week 4: keep the FLK1 mock, cut week 5 to your four weakest subjects only, and accept that week 6 will be a full week rather than a light one.
- Behind after week 7: you are not behind, you are at the point where more content stops helping. Week 8 as written, then the paper.
- Seat confirmed late (direct booking, 19 to 23 November): you have seven weeks. Merge weeks 1 and 2 into ten days by cutting the Friday session sets to 45 questions, and keep everything from week 3 onward as written.
The bottom line
Eight weeks at 40 hours is a full-time plan and it works; eight weeks at 20 hours works only for a candidate whose first pass is done. Either way, the two things that separate the January candidates who pass from the ones who resit in July are the same: questions before reading from week 5, and every full mock sat in the real two-session structure with the break. The question bank comparison lists where those mocks come from, and the checklist is where you record the 144 ticks that say you are done.
