Free SQE1 Revision Timetable Template (12 Weeks)

Most SQE1 timetables you will find online split the syllabus into equal weekly chunks. That produces a tidy grid and a badly weighted revision plan, because the 13 subjects are nothing like equal in size.

This is a timetable built from the actual topic counts in the SRA specification — 144 topics, allocated in proportion to how much of the syllabus each subject actually is. Copy it, adjust it to your own exam date using the scaling section at the end, and you have a plan that matches the exam rather than the calendar.

First: The Weighting Nobody Plans For

Here is how the 144 topics actually divide.

FLK2 is more than half the syllabus. If you split your revision evenly between the two papers — which is what almost every generic plan does — you are giving 58% of the content 50% of the time.

By subject:

Criminal Law and Practice is more than three times the size of Legal Services. Any plan that gives them a week each is wrong before you start.

A caveat worth stating: topic count is a proxy for syllabus size, not for difficulty or for marks in your particular sitting. Solicitors Accounts is only 8 topics but is calculation-heavy and catches people out; Legal Services is small but ethics pervades both papers. Use the weighting as your default allocation, then adjust for your own weak areas once you have a diagnostic score.

The 12-Week Template

This assumes roughly 15 hours a week — about 180 hours in total — and follows an FLK1-first order. Weeks 11 and 12 are deliberately reserved for full mocks and consolidation, not new content.

Weeks 1–4 cover FLK1 (61 topics), weeks 5–10 cover FLK2 (83 topics). That is the 42/58 split, honoured.

What a Single Week Looks Like

The grid above tells you what. This is how — a repeatable weekly shape at 15 hours:

The ratio matters more than the total. Roughly 40% of your time should be answering questions, not reading. Candidates who fail almost always have that ratio inverted — see the most common study mistakes.

The end-of-week weak-area block is the part people skip and the part that compounds. Getting a question wrong and moving on teaches you nothing; getting it wrong, understanding why, and re-attempting it a week later is the whole mechanism.

Scaling It to Your Exam Date

Twelve weeks is a common shape, not a rule. Keep the proportions and change the length.

If you have 16 weeks or more. Do not add new subjects — add depth. Give the four largest subjects (Criminal Law and Practice, Business Law and Practice, Property Law and Practice, Dispute Resolution) a second week each, and add a third mock. Sixteen weeks is about the point of diminishing returns for most candidates; beyond that, spacing beats volume. See the six-month plan.

If you have 8 weeks. Compress the content pass, not the questions. Pair the small subjects more aggressively (Legal System with Legal Services, Solicitors Accounts with Wills), keep both mocks, and accept that you will rely more heavily on spaced repetition to hold the earlier material.

If you have 4 weeks or fewer. This is triage, not revision. Work from a diagnostic score outwards: full mock first, then the weakest four subjects only, then the rest at recognition level. The four-week last-minute plan sets this out properly.

If you are working full-time. At 10 hours a week the same content needs roughly 18 weeks rather than 12. Do not compress a 12-week plan into 10 hours — extend it. The working-full-time guide covers realistic scheduling, and the hours calculator converts your exam date into a weekly commitment.

FLK1 First, FLK2 First, or Together?

The template above is FLK1-first. That is the common default, but it is not the only sensible order.

FLK1 first suits most candidates, particularly recent law graduates — contract and tort are the most familiar material, so you build momentum before hitting the heavier FLK2 subjects.

FLK2 first makes sense if you are sitting FLK2 earlier, or if property and criminal are your weakest areas and you want maximum spacing between first exposure and the exam.

Together — alternating papers week by week — suits candidates sitting both in the same window who want even freshness across both. It costs some context-switching efficiency.

Whichever you pick, the subject study order guide explains the dependencies worth respecting: Contract before Business Law, Criminal Liability before Criminal Practice, Land Law before Property Practice.

Three Rules That Make Any Timetable Work

1. Book the mocks in the diary before anything else. They are the only honest feedback in the whole process, and they are the first thing to get squeezed when a week runs over. Two full-length timed mocks is the minimum; three is better. Start with a free full-length mock to get a baseline before week 1, so your weak-area work is aimed at something real.

2. Never move a topic forward. If you lose a week, cut depth from that week rather than pushing its topics into the next one. Deferred topics accumulate and the plan collapses in week 8 — the single most common way a good timetable fails.

3. Keep flashcards running daily throughout. Twenty minutes, every day, from week 1. The cases, statutes and numbers are pure recall and they decay fast. Doing them in a block at the end does not work — the spaced repetition guide explains why the schedule has to be continuous.

Get This as a Personalised Plan Instead

The grid above is a template, which means it is a compromise — it assumes 15 hours a week and a 12-week runway.

If you want the same weighting applied to your exam date and your available hours, the form below generates it: enter your date, your weekly hours and your preferred pathway, and it builds a week-by-week schedule across all 144 topics, with the final weeks reserved for mocks. It emails you the plan and needs no account. Plans run from 4 to 16 weeks depending on your date.

You can also generate one on the free study plan page.

Related Reading

• 12-week SQE1 study plan — the narrative version of this template
• Six-month study plan — for a longer runway
• How many hours do you need? — the arithmetic behind the weekly commitment
• The SQE1 syllabus: all 13 subjects and 144 topics — what you are actually covering
• Hardest SQE1 subjects ranked — where to spend the extra weeks if you have them
• How to pass SQE1 — the full method