Why Numbers Are the Cheapest Marks on the Paper
Single best answer questions love bright lines. A scenario that turns on whether a defence was filed in time, whether a charge was registered inside its window, or whether a detention review happened when it should have is easy to write, easy to mark, and brutal to answer if you have never pinned the number down. Unlike a question testing judgment, a question testing a time limit has no partial credit for vibes: you either know the figure or you are choosing between five plausible-sounding options with nothing to steer by.
The good news is that the list of numbers worth knowing is finite, and shorter than most candidates fear. This guide collects the high-yield time limits, deadlines and clocks across the SQE1 syllabus into one place — every figure below is drawn from the same source material as our question bank, organised the way memory research says you should learn them: in clusters, with the confusable pairs pointed out.
One framing note before the tables. Some numbers are hard law (a defence is due in 14 days; that is the rule). Others are practice guidance (the Conveyancing Protocol suggests 10 working days for replies to enquiries). The tables flag which is which, because the exam can test the difference.
And one piece of genuinely good news at the end: from January 2027, a whole category of figures — monetary tax values — has been formally removed from the memorisation burden. Details in the specification changes guide, and below.
FLK1: Dispute Resolution — Limitation Periods
The Limitation Act 1980 set is the most predictable numbers cluster on the entire exam.
| Claim | Limitation period |
|---|---|
| Simple contract | 6 years from breach |
| Tort (general) | 6 years from damage sustained |
| Personal injury | 3 years from accrual or date of knowledge, if later |
| Latent damage (non-PI negligence) | 3 years from knowledge, subject to a 15-year longstop |
| Contract under seal (specialty) | 12 years |
| Recovery of land | 12 years |
| Defamation | 1 year from publication |
Traps the examiners like:
- The longstop kills late claims dead. Fifteen years from the negligent act or omission, and it does not matter that the claimant could never have discovered the damage in time.
- Personal injury is 3, not 6 — and the date-of-knowledge alternative start date is exactly the kind of nuance a single best answer question hinges on.
- Protected parties: time does not run while the claimant lacks capacity; when capacity returns, the clock starts and the ordinary period applies.
FLK1: Dispute Resolution — The Procedural Clock
| Step | Time limit | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Serve the claim form | Within 4 months of issue | Hard rule |
| Deemed service, first-class post | 2nd business day after posting | Hard rule |
| Acknowledgment of service | 14 days from service of claim form | Hard rule |
| Defence, no acknowledgment filed | 14 days from service of particulars | Hard rule |
| Defence, acknowledgment filed | 28 days total from service of particulars | Hard rule |
| Challenge jurisdiction after acknowledging | Within 14 days of the acknowledgment | Hard rule |
| Notice for an ordinary application | 3 clear days | Hard rule |
| Allow inspection of disclosed documents | Within 7 days of written request | Hard rule |
| Witness summons binding | Served at least 7 days before attendance | Hard rule |
| Pre-trial checklist filed | Not more than 8 weeks before trial | Court-set |
| Part 36 offer relevant period | Not less than 21 days | Hard rule |
| Appellant's notice | Within 21 days of the decision | Hard rule |
| Pay a money judgment | Within 14 days of judgment | Default rule |
| Professional negligence pre-action acknowledgment | 21 days | Protocol |
| Debt protocol reply period (individuals) | 30 days | Protocol |
The confusable cluster here is 14 versus 28: acknowledgment buys the defendant an extra 14 days for the defence (28 total), and a written resolution in company law also dies at 28 days — same number, different world. Learn them as a pair and the exam cannot ambush you with either.
FLK1: Business Law and Practice — Company Procedure
| Step | Time limit |
|---|---|
| Notice of a general meeting (private company) | 14 clear days |
| Notice of a plc AGM | 21 clear days |
| Latest a proxy can be required to be lodged | 48 hours before the meeting |
| Directors must call a members'-requisitioned GM | Within 21 days (held within 28 days of the notice) |
| Written resolution lapses | 28 days from circulation |
| Special notice (e.g. removing a director) | 28 days to the company |
| File a special resolution / amended articles | Within 15 days |
| Notify a director appointment (AP01) and update registers | Within 14 days |
| Register a charge | 21 days from creation — void against liquidator, administrator and creditors if missed |
| Statutory demand ripens into deemed insolvency | £750+ unpaid for 21 days |
| Plc must hold its AGM | Within 6 months of financial year-end |
| Directors' long-term service contract needing member approval | Term over 2 years |
The 15-days trap: resolutions and amended articles go to Companies House within 15 days, but director appointments and register updates are 14. One day apart, tested precisely because candidates blur them.
The 21-days cluster: charge registration, statutory demand ripening, calling a requisitioned meeting, plc AGM notice. Same number, four different rules — cluster them deliberately so each has its own anchor.
FLK1: Business Law and Practice — Insolvency Clawback Windows
| Antecedent transaction | Look-back window |
|---|---|
| Preference — unconnected person | 6 months before onset of insolvency (desire to prefer must be proved) |
| Preference — connected person | 2 years (desire to prefer presumed) |
| Transaction at an undervalue | 2 years |
| Avoidance of floating charge — unconnected | 12 months (company must have been insolvent) |
| Avoidance of floating charge — connected | 2 years (no insolvency requirement) |
| Director disqualification | 2 to 15 years |
| Administrator's proposals to creditors | Within 8 weeks of appointment |
| Standalone moratorium, initial period | 20 business days |
| MVL declaration of solvency | Made within 5 weeks before the resolution; debts payable within 12 months |
The pattern worth internalising: connected persons double the window and flip the burden. Six months becomes two years for preferences; the insolvency requirement disappears for floating charges. Questions on this are usually won by spotting the relationship, not the arithmetic.
FLK1: Legal Services — Complaints and Regulation
| Rule | Number |
|---|---|
| Complaint to the Legal Ombudsman | Within 1 year of the act or omission (or of when the complainant should have realised), and within 6 months of the firm's final response |
| Legal Ombudsman compensation cap | Up to £50,000 |
| Run-off cover after a firm closes | 6 years |
Note the LeO limits: they were shortened to 1 year / 6 months from 1 April 2023 — older study materials still circulating say six years / three years. If yours does, that tells you something about its vintage; here is how to check the rest of it.
FLK2: Criminal Practice — The PACE Detention Clock
The single most examinable timeline in FLK2:
| Stage | Limit | Authorised by |
|---|---|---|
| Detention without charge — starting point | 24 hours | Custody officer |
| Extension to 36 hours | +12 hours | Superintendent or above |
| Extension to 72 hours | Application, blocks of up to 36 hours | Magistrates' court |
| Absolute maximum | 96 hours | Magistrates' court (second extension) |
| First detention review | Within 6 hours of authorisation | Inspector or above, uninvolved |
| Subsequent reviews | Every 9 hours | Inspector or above |
| Delay to the right to have someone informed | Maximum 36 hours | Never beyond |
Memorise it as a story, not seven rows: 24 by the custody officer, plus 12 from a superintendent makes 36, then the magistrates take you to 96 in 36-hour bites — reviewed at 6, then every 9, and nobody stays incommunicado past 36. Candidates who learn the narrative recover the numbers under pressure; candidates who learn the table often transpose them.
Related clocks worth a card each:
| Rule | Number |
|---|---|
| Pre-charge bail — initial period | 3 months (custody officer); inspector to 6, superintendent to 9, magistrates beyond |
| Person arrested for breach of bail | Before magistrates within 24 hours |
| Prosecution appeal against grant of bail | Oral notice at the hearing, written within 2 hours, heard within 48 hours |
| Case sent to Crown Court — PTPH listed | Within 28 days |
| Jury majority verdict available | After 2 hours' deliberation (2 hours 10 minutes in practice) |
FLK2: Criminal Practice — Sentencing Spans
| Rule | Number |
|---|---|
| Magistrates' maximum — single summary offence | 6 months |
| Magistrates' maximum — single either-way offence | 12 months (since 18 November 2024) |
| Suspended sentence operational period | 6 months to 2 years |
| Unpaid work requirement | 40 to 300 hours |
| Curfew requirement | Up to 20 hours a day, up to 2 years |
That November 2024 change to either-way sentencing powers is another currency marker: materials that still say "6 months for everything" predate it. Full subject coverage in the Criminal Law revision guide.
FLK2: Property Practice and Land Law — Transaction Deadlines
| Step | Time limit | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SDLT return and payment | Within 14 days of completion | Hard rule |
| Draft contract issued after instruction | 10 working days | Protocol guidance |
| Enquiries raised / answered | 10 working days each way | Protocol guidance |
| Search results treated as current | Around 6 months | Practice, not law |
| Notice to complete | Complete within 10 working days of the notice | Standard Conditions |
| Protect a residential tenancy deposit | Within 30 days | Hard rule |
| Root of title (unregistered land) | A document at least 15 years old | Hard rule |
| Adverse possession application (registered land) | After 10 years' possession; proprietor then has 65 business days to object | Hard rule |
| LTA 1954 section 25 / section 26 notice | 6 to 12 months before the intended end date | Hard rule |
And the pair that decides more marks than any other in leases:
- A lease over 3 years needs a deed to be legal.
- A lease over 7 years needs registration.
Three and seven. The examiners know candidates blur these; a question that gives you a five-year lease is testing exactly whether you know it needs a deed but not registration. The Property Practice guide covers the full transaction skeleton these numbers hang on.
FLK2: Wills and Administration — The Estate Timeline
| Rule | Number |
|---|---|
| Minimum age to make a will | 18 |
| Spouse/civil partner survivorship on intestacy | Must survive the intestate by 28 days |
| IHT payable | Within 6 months from the end of the month of death |
| IHT instalment option (qualifying assets) | Annual instalments over 10 years |
| PET becomes exempt | Donor survives 7 years |
| Lifetime chargeable transfer | Taxed when made, topped up if death follows within 7 years |
| Transferable nil rate band claim | Within 2 years of the second death |
| Gazette notice protection for PRs | Claims cut off 2 months after advertisement |
| Inheritance (Provision) Act 1975 claim | Within 6 months of the grant of representation (court has a discretion to extend) |
Two of these are precision traps. The IHT deadline runs from the end of the month of death, not the date of death — a mid-month death quietly gains you a couple of weeks, and answer options exploit candidates who forget. And the 28-day survivorship rule applies on intestacy by statute; a gift by will has no default survivorship period unless the will imposes one (well-drafted wills commonly say 28 or 30 days, which is precisely why the two get confused). Full context in the Wills and Administration guide.
Solicitors Accounts: One Number and One Word
The SRA Accounts Rules are strikingly light on numbers. Two things matter:
- Client account reconciliation: at least every five weeks. The one hard figure in the rules, and the exam uses it.
- Everything else is "promptly" — paying client money into client account, returning residual balances, correcting breaches. The absence of fixed periods is itself examinable: an answer option inventing "within 14 days" for a duty the rules leave at "promptly" is a distractor, not a rule.
The calculations side of the subject has its own traps entirely — covered in Solicitors Accounts: the calculations that catch everyone out.
The Figures You No Longer Need to Memorise
From the January 2027 sitting, the updated assessment specification confirms that where a question requires you to apply the monetary value of an exemption, relief, rate or threshold — the figure will be provided in the question. The nil rate band, residence nil rate band, CGT annual exempt amount, SDLT bands, income and corporation tax rates: when a computation needs them, they appear on screen.
What stays on you is everything in this guide — time limits are not monetary values. The 7-year PET clock, the 14-day defence, the five-week reconciliation and the 96-hour detention maximum remain pure memory work. The change simply means your flashcard time goes to numbers that decide procedure, not numbers Parliament revises every spring. The full change list is in our specification changes guide.
How to Actually Memorise These
Cluster by number, then by subject. The brain retrieves "21 days" faster when charge registration, Part 36, appeal notices and statutory demands live on one mental shelf with distinct hooks, rather than scattered across four subjects. Build one review pass that cuts across subjects by figure, alongside your normal subject revision.
Turn confusable pairs into explicit cards. 14 vs 15 days at Companies House. 3-year deeds vs 7-year registration. Six months vs two years for preferences. Date of death vs end of month of death. A card that asks "which is which?" inoculates you against the exact distractor pattern the exam uses.
Use spaced repetition, not rereading. Numbers decay fast; the fix is scheduled retrieval at widening intervals — the method (and the tooling) is in our spaced repetition guide. Every figure in this guide already exists as a card in our 5,300+ flashcard bank, scheduled by the same algorithm.
Then make questions do the final compression. A number you have retrieved inside a scenario — a defence filed on day 20 after acknowledgment, a charge registered on day 23 — sticks in a way no list can match. That is what timed practice is for.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many numbers do I actually need to know for SQE1?
The high-yield core is the sixty-odd figures in this guide. The syllabus contains more incidental numbers, but the ones that repeatedly decide single best answer questions are the procedural clocks and windows above. Master these first; collect stragglers through question practice.
Are these numbers current for the January 2027 sitting?
Yes — this guide reflects the law as tested on the current cycle, including the post-2023 Legal Ombudsman limits and the November 2024 magistrates' sentencing powers, and it accounts for the January 2027 specification change on provided tax figures. When rules move, updated materials matter more for numbers than for anything else.
Will the exam give me any dates or figures in the question?
Scenario dates, yes — questions routinely tell you when a claim form was served or a charge created, then test whether the deadline was met. From January 2027, monetary tax values are provided too. Time limits themselves are never given: knowing them is the skill being assessed.
What is the best way to revise limitation periods?
Learn the defaults (6 years), then the exceptions as deviations: personal injury drops to 3, defamation to 1, specialties and land rise to 12, latent damage adds the 15-year longstop. Anchoring exceptions to a default halves the memory load compared with learning seven unrelated figures.
The Bottom Line
Numbers questions are the closest thing SQE1 has to guaranteed marks: finite list, zero ambiguity, pure preparation. Put the clusters above into a spaced-repetition system, drill the confusable pairs until they separate, and let scenario practice cement the rest.
If you would rather not build the card deck yourself, the flashcard bank has every figure here — scheduled, cross-referenced and kept current with the specification.