What is a personal injury lawyer’s favourite dessert?

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks at Kinnu: new notes, new mocks, hundreds of new MCQs and flashcards, and a new SQE2 product on the way. Oh, and we’re officially #lawfluencers now. Come and find us on TikTok.

The real news this week is that we’re bringing video to the platform.

These will be short visual explainers for the trickiest topics.

We’re starting with “Putting the Law into Practice” videos, made for consolidation, when you need to see how the rules actually work. After that, we are going to have videos built into our notes pages and videos which will pop up in your conversations with LARA, so a visual explanation is there exactly when you need it.

The team has put a huge amount of work into these, using some very clever codey stuff that I won’t pretend to fully understand. What I can tell you, as someone who’s sat the SQE, is that I’d have loved to have these when I was revising.

Keep an eye out for them over the coming weeks.

The client, a building contractor, is the defendant to a claim for £42,000 for defective roofing work. The claimant issued the claim form on Monday 12 October 2026. The claim form was served by email on Tuesday 13 October 2026, before 4.30pm, and it states that the particulars of claim are to follow.

The claimant’s solicitors sent the particulars of claim to the client’s registered office by first class post on Thursday 15 October 2026. The envelope was delivered on Friday 16 October 2026. The client’s managing director tells you that the claim is disputed in full, but that an expert’s report on the roofing will take several weeks.

On Thursday 29 October 2026 you file an acknowledgment of service, which is within the time allowed for doing so. Nothing else has been filed. The claimant’s solicitors have not offered, and the client has not asked for, any agreed extension of time. The managing director wants to diarise the last day for filing the defence and asks you to confirm the date.

Content warning: this article discusses sexual offences and suicide risk.

In the same week, two of Britain’s best-known entertainers faced major court decisions over allegations going back around 20 years. The two cases went through very different legal routes.

Russell Brand: convicted and sentenced

On 5 November, a jury at Southwark Crown Court convicted Brand of one rape and three sexual assaults against four women between 2004 and 2009, and acquitted him of three other charges. Four days later, Mr Justice Bennathan sentenced him.

The judge placed the rape in Category 2B of the sentencing guidelines, which gives a starting point of eight years. He added two years for aggravating features of the offence. He then took off one year for mitigation, including the 17 years since the last offence and Brand’s lack of significant previous convictions, even though the guidelines give limited weight to good character in serious sexual cases. That left nine years for the rape.

The harder question was totality: the overall sentence has to reflect all the offending without becoming disproportionate. Making every sentence consecutive risked an excessive total. Making them all concurrent would have failed to reflect that there were several victims over five years. The judge took a middle course. He reduced one assault sentence from two years to 18 months, and ordered the three assault sentences to run concurrently with each other but consecutively to the rape. The total was 10 years and six months.

David Walliams: allegations published, no criminal charges yet

Walliams sought a permanent injunction to stop ITN and the Guardian publishing allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies. His lawyers did not rely only on ordinary privacy arguments. They argued that publication created a serious risk of suicide, which engaged the state’s positive obligations under Articles 2 (the right to life) and 3 (the prohibition against torture or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights. They also argued that the likely damage to his relationship with his son engaged Article 8 (the right to private and family life).

The publishers replied that an injunction on these grounds would be a “radical and unprincipled expansion” of the courts’ role, and that responsibility for managing the risk lay with mental health services.

Mr Justice Nicklin accepted that the risk was genuine and grave, but held that it could not on its own justify stopping publication. The state was meeting its protective duty through psychiatric care, and that duty does not require every remaining risk to be removed. He also warned that accepting the argument would let almost any serious harm become grounds for suppressing journalism. Article 8 carried substantial weight, but it was outweighed by freedom of expression under Article 10 and the public interest in the reporting.

Walliams was given permission to appeal but did not lodge one, and the investigations were published on 10 November. The court made no finding on whether the allegations are true and Walliams denies all the allegations made against him.

Why it matters

Both cases concern allegations dating back decades, but illustrate very different areas of the law. Brand’s case demonstrates how sentencing guidelines and the totality principle are applied to multiple offences involving different victims. Walliams’s case explores the limits of the state’s positive human rights obligations when weighed against freedom of expression and the public interest in reporting.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised, Samaritans are available 24/7 on 116 123.

Sources:

Brett Wilson LLP, “Russell Brand sentenced”

Media Mole, “Judge’s sentencing remarks to Russell Brand – read in full”

Fox 5 New York, “British actor and comedian Russell Brand found guilty of rape and sexual assault” (5 November 2026)

RTÉ, “Russell Brand jailed for 10 years and 6 months” (9 November 2026)

The Irish Times, “David Walliams: What are the legal issues around his attempt to stop allegations being published?” (10 November 2026)

Law Society Gazette, “Celebrity injunction: The Guardian names ‘PPT’ as appeal times out” (10 November 2026)

TheJournal.ie, “Famous man loses High Court bid to stop UK news outlets publishing allegations against him” (3 November 2026)

One thing I definitely did when revising for SQE1 was spend far too much time on the subjects I was already comfortable with.

I think it’s quite easy to convince yourself you’re having a productive revision session when you’re getting most of the questions right and your scores are looking good. It feels reassuring, especially when you’re already stressed about the exam.

But looking back, I was definitely avoiding some of the topics I struggled with. I’d tell myself I would come back to them another day, but somehow that day never really came.

Something that helped me was paying more attention to my MCQ scores for individual topics rather than just looking at my overall percentage. It made me realise that although my scores might have looked decent overall, there were still areas where I was consistently dropping marks.

I started making a conscious effort to tackle those topics first, rather than leaving them until the end of the day when I was tired and had very little motivation left.

I’ll be honest, it wasn’t particularly enjoyable getting loads of questions wrong in topics I already knew I struggled with. But I had to remind myself that the whole point of practising was to identify what I didn’t know, not just prove to myself what I did.

My biggest advice would be not to let a good overall MCQ score give you a false sense of security. Look at where you’re actually losing marks and be willing to spend more time on the subjects you’d probably rather avoid.

It’s not always the most enjoyable way to revise, but I genuinely think it’s one of the most useful things you can do when preparing for SQE1.