Can I pass SQE1 while working full time? Hours and timeline

How many hours a week do you need for SQE1 if you work full time?

If you work full time, plan on roughly 15 to 20 hours a week for six to nine months, with a heavier final month. That’s the pattern we see most often in our research across social media and interviews with candidates. It’s a guide rather than a guarantee, though, because your starting point matters. It’s also more than the 350-hour minimum strictly needs, because real plans lose weeks to work and life, and the final weeks of mocks and revision add hours on top.

A recent law graduate usually needs less time than someone who’s new to law or coming back after years away.

The SRA doesn’t set a number of study hours. It just says how you study is up to you (SRA). So the ranges on this page are practical guidance drawn from what working candidates tell us. Please don’t read them as precise statistics.

Is 3, 4, 6 or 9 months enough to study for SQE1?

For most people with a full-time job, six months is the most realistic plan. Many working candidates take nine. Three months is possible, but it takes roughly 27 to 38 hours a week.

The table below turns each timeline into the weekly hours you’d need. It uses two totals. The first is 350 hours, the minimum in our guide to self-studying for SQE1. The second is 500 hours, a more comfortable total if you’re new to law or out of practice.

Time until the exam	Weeks	Hours a week for 350 hours	Hours a week for 500 hours	For a full-time worker
3 months	13	27	38	Very hard without annual leave or a strong law background
4 months	17	21	29	Possible, with long weekends and leave near the end
6 months	26	13 to 14	19	Realistic for most people
9 months	39	9	13	A steady pace, but harder to keep momentum

Think of these as illustrations rather than targets. Real weeks are uneven, with more hours near the end. If your weeks are likely to be thin or irregular, I’d pick the longer timeline rather than hope to catch up later.

Can you pass SQE1 while working full time?

Yes. Plenty of working candidates pass, and many of the candidates featured in our SQE Stories prepared alongside a full-time job.

It’s hard, though. Their stories describe giving up evenings, weekends, and much of their social life for months.

What matters most is whether you can protect regular study time, week after week, and leave enough of it for practice questions and timed mocks. The number of months matters less. A long timeline with thin, irregular weeks isn’t any safer than a shorter, consistent one.

What does a realistic weekly timetable look like?

The most common structure is short weekday sessions plus longer weekend days. That typically means one to two hours on weekday evenings or mornings, and weekend sessions of up to six to eight hours a day. Questions on the commute or at lunch fill the gaps, and the Law Drills app is built for exactly that. Vaishali Gopalakirushnan passed while working full time as a paralegal. She wrote: “I had the Law Drills app, so I would do questions on my walk to work, during my lunch break, at the pub with my partner while watching the World Cup matches, or in bed instead of scrolling through social media.”

Here’s a sample week of about 16 hours, for the middle months of a six-month plan:

Day	Session	Hours
Monday	15 to 20 questions on the commute or at lunch; one hour of new content in the evening	1.5
Tuesday	New content, then a short set of questions on the same topic	1.5
Wednesday	Questions and a review of your error log	1
Thursday	New content, then questions	1.5
Friday	Rest, or 30 minutes of flashcards	0.5
Saturday	Long block: new topic in the morning, mixed questions in the afternoon	6
Sunday	Weekly review and one timed session; afternoon off	4

If you can only manage around 10 hours, stretch your timeline rather than squeezing the content in.

Plan for more in the final four to six weeks. Working candidates often ramp up near the end, sometimes to 30 hours a week or more, and many take annual leave before the exam.

From January 2027, each FLK paper has 170 questions, sat as two sessions of 85, with 2 hours 33 minutes per session (SRA). That’s about 108 seconds per question.

The papers also group subjects by session from then, so you can plan your revision weeks around each session’s subjects. At the weekend, build up to sitting at least one full 85-question session in timed conditions.

How do you use a question bank in short sessions?

I’d use short sessions for practice questions and save new content for your longer blocks. Twenty minutes is enough for 10 to 15 questions and their explanations. It’s also the easiest study time to protect around a job.

Four habits help short sessions count:

1. Set a small daily number of questions and stick to it. A fixed set every day works better than a big set once a week.
2. Read every explanation, even for questions you got right.
3. Log each mistake in one line, and go back over them weekly.
4. Once you’ve covered a subject, target your weak topics.

Your scores matter more than how many questions you do. Our score guide suggests aiming for 65-70% on Law Drills exam-style practice questions, and treats around 1,000 questions as a solid baseline.

Mock scores need adjusting for the provider before you read anything into them. Our mock scores vs real results guide shows how.

This is what Law Drills (that’s us!) is built for. The question bank is adaptive, so it chooses your next questions to fill your gaps, and you don’t spend a thin week deciding what to revise. It tracks your performance against the official SRA syllabus, and the 65-70% target in our score guide is based on Law Drills scores, so you can see when you’re on track. You can start for free.

For timed practice, add full mocks from other providers too, because the real exam has many authors and styles.

What do working candidates’ stories show?

A few patterns come up again and again in the published stories: a fixed weekly routine, practice fitted into small pockets of time, and leave before the exam. Several working candidates also wish they’d started practice questions or full mocks sooner.

Annabel Field kept to a small, steady weekly routine. She was working as a paralegal at a national law firm when she sat SQE1. She wrote: “Since I was working full-time while studying, I did a part-time prep course, which meant studying for about an hour each evening and around five hours over the weekend.” She kept one day a week free, normally a Sunday, and passed first time in July 2025.

Chizurum Ogedengbe fitted her study around irregular hours. She combined self-study with a full-time role that had unsocial hours and night shifts, and started in December 2024 for the July 2025 sitting. She wrote: “I decided to stop worrying about not hitting a specific number of hours everyday and start maximising all the time I could find.” She also used annual leave: “I had pre booked annual leave days for the second half of June and the first half of July.” She did about 1,500 questions on Law Drills, wishes she had started them earlier, and passed in the first quintile.

Vaishali Gopalakirushnan rotated between the papers to keep both fresh. She studied part-time around a full-time paralegal job, with a Saturday morning class. She wrote: “One week, I would focus on FLK1, covering one subject per day, and the following week I would focus on FLK2.” She placed in quintiles 1 and 2.

A few candidates wish they’d started practice sooner. Katie Metcalfe self-studied while working full time as a family paralegal and raising a young son. She wrote: “If [I] had to sit SQE1 again I would start Law Drills far earlier than I did. I really only started solid MCQ revision in the last month or so but I wish I had started it far earlier as it was where I feel I learnt the most.”

Hannah Khatib, who also worked full time, advises candidates to “leave at least 2-3 weeks before the exam purely for MCQs and revision.” Maitri Sanghvi and Annabel Field, both working full time, each say they’d start full-length timed mocks much earlier.

Then there’s leave, if you can get it. Alice Magean, who worked three to four days a week in her role throughout her SQE course, wrote: “I would also try to take 2 months off work to only study rather than try to juggle everything.”

When should you defer or switch sittings?

It’s worth thinking about deferring if either of these is still true about six weeks before the exam:

• You haven’t covered every subject once.
• Your exam-style practice scores are well below the 65-70% target in our score guide.

If you can, decide before the booking deadline, because moving or cancelling later costs money.

Here are the dates for the next two sittings (SRA):

• January 2027: FLK1 11 to 15 January, FLK2 18 to 22 January 2027. Booking closes on 23 November 2026. Results are due on 9 March 2027.
• July 2027: FLK1 12 to 16 July, FLK2 19 to 23 July 2027. The SRA hasn’t yet confirmed the booking window.

SQE1 costs £2,006 from September 2026, or £1,003 per paper. You book and sit both papers in the same window, unless you’re resitting one (SRA).

Here’s what it costs to change your mind, under the SRA’s terms and conditions:

• Within 14 days of booking: full refund.
• Up to two weeks before the booking deadline: a £30 fee per assessment.
• After that, until four weeks before the assessment window: 25% of the fee.
• From then until 96 hours before: 75%.
• Within 96 hours, or if you don’t attend: 100%.

You can’t move a booking to a later sitting. The SRA’s rescheduling period (19 to 23 November 2026 for January 2027) only lets you change test centre.

The SRA gives you six years from your first assessment to complete the SQE, with up to three attempts at SQE1. So moving to July delays your exam without using up an attempt.

If you do end up resitting after a fail, our guide to passing an SQE resit covers how to change your approach.

Common questions

Is 3 months enough to study for SQE1 while working full time?

Only if you can find roughly 27 to 38 hours a week, or you already know a lot of the law. Finding that many hours usually means taking annual leave. Some working candidates do pass on three months, but most give themselves longer. For most people, six months is a more realistic plan.

How many hours a day should I study for SQE1 if I work full time?

A common pattern is one to two hours on weekday evenings or mornings, plus longer weekend sessions of up to six to eight hours a day. For most working candidates, that adds up to roughly 15 to 20 hours a week, rising in the final four to six weeks.

How many hours in total does SQE1 preparation take?

The SRA doesn't set a figure. Our self-study guide uses 350 hours or more as a minimum. If you're new to law or out of practice, plan for more (closer to 500 hours) and spread it over six to nine months.

Should I take annual leave before SQE1?

If you can, it helps. Many working candidates take leave before the exam, anything from a few days to several weeks, often around the exam weeks themselves. It gives you room for full timed mocks and final revision without having to do a day's work first.

Can I change my SQE1 sitting if I fall behind?

Not directly. The SRA only lets you move your seat to another test centre in a short rescheduling period (19 to 23 November 2026 for January 2027), not to a later sitting. To sit in July instead, you cancel your January booking and book again when July booking opens. Cancelling costs £30 per paper up to two weeks before the booking deadline, then a rising share of the fee.

Is a part-time prep course enough if I work full time?

It can be, but signing up for a course isn't the same as putting in enough hours. A weekly class of a few hours still needs independent reading and practice questions around it. Many working candidates who pass take a part-time course and add their own practice on top.