This guide is written for solicitors, trainees and law students in England and Wales.
The conduct of litigation is a reserved legal activity. Only an authorised person may carry it on. After the Court of Appeal ruling in Mazur, staff who are not authorised may still do that work for and on behalf of someone who is, so long as the set-up for supervision is real. This explainer shows where the line falls.
Who is this explainer for?
Anyone who supervises unadmitted staff. And anyone who is one.
That takes in paralegals, trainees, apprentices, and legal executives who are not authorised for litigation. It takes in the solicitors who sign off their work. It takes in COLPs, law centres, council legal teams and any firm with a leveraged model.
This is not legal advice. It will not tell you whether your own set-up passes. It sets out what the Act says, what the courts decided, and what the regulators have published.
What is the conduct of litigation?
One of six reserved legal activities in section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007. The others are rights of audience, reserved instrument activities, probate work, notarial acts and the administration of oaths.
Schedule 2 to the Act spells it out. The conduct of litigation covers issuing proceedings before any court in England and Wales. It covers starting, running and defending those proceedings. And it covers the side functions that go with them.
Two things follow. Carrying on a reserved legal activity with no right to do so is a crime under section 14. It can also be a contempt of court. So this is a rules question, not a debating point.
What did the High Court decide in Mazur?
That supervision on its own was not enough.
The case began as a debt claim. The defendants acted in person. They spotted that the man running the claim for the other side, whose job title was Head of Litigation, held no practising certificate. They applied to the court on the basis that he was conducting litigation unlawfully.
The SRA had written to his firm in December 2024. That letter said staff at authorised firms could conduct litigation under supervision. Sheldon J took a different view.
In Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB), given in September 2025, he held that only an authorised person may conduct litigation. Supervision did not pass that right down to an employee.
The effect was fast and wide. Firms moved work around. Some staff changed teams, took a demotion or lost a role. Law centres, council teams and personal injury firms built on supervised paralegals found their way of working in doubt. Both the SRA and the Law Society had backed the reading Sheldon J adopted.
What did the Court of Appeal decide?
It reversed him on 31 March 2026. All three judges agreed.
CILEX had stepped in below and took the appeal. Bean LJ gave permission on 24 November 2025, on the footing that the point mattered to the whole profession. The panel was Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, Sir Colin Birss, then Chancellor of the High Court, and Andrews LJ.
In Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2026] EWCA Civ 369 the court held that a person who is not authorised may lawfully do tasks inside the conduct of litigation. They must act for and on behalf of an authorised person, under that person’s supervision. The Act was never meant to break up the way firms had handed work down for decades.
The catch sits in the wording. The authorised person has to put appropriate arrangements in place, both for supervising the work and for handing it down. The Law Society calls this a looser frame than the High Court’s. It also says the frame does not remove every limit on what an unadmitted employee may do.
| Position | May an unadmitted employee conduct litigation? | On what basis? |
|---|---|---|
| Practice before September 2025 | Assumed yes | A job at an authorised firm, plus supervision |
| High Court, September 2025 | No | Nothing short of being authorised would do |
| Court of Appeal, March 2026 | Yes | Acting for and on behalf of an authorised person who has put proper supervision and delegation in place |
Where does the line fall now?
Not where firms assumed before September 2025. And not where the High Court left it.
The question is no longer which tasks are off limits. Tasks inside the words of the Act can be handed down. The question is whether the authorised person has a set-up that makes that real. And whether the unadmitted colleague is truly acting for that person, rather than running the file alone.
One boundary is firmer than the rest. Rights of audience are a separate reserved activity, and the Mazur reasoning does not carry over. In Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Langley [2026] EWCC 1 a district judge held that a solicitor’s agent was not an exempt person under Schedule 3. He had no right to speak at a small claims trial. Doing advocacy, the judge said, was not the same as assisting with the conduct of litigation.
Keep the two apart. Handing down file work is one question. Sending someone to speak in court is another.
What does supervision have to look like?
The judgment sets a standard, not a checklist. Further guidance is still being written by the SRA with the Law Society. Even so, the direction is clear enough to act on.
- Name the authorised person responsible for each file. Not the firm. A person.
- Record what has been handed down, and to whom. That is the thing being tested.
- Make the set-up real. Be available. Review the file. Take the decisions, rather than hear about them later.
- Split rights of audience from file work in your policy. They are different activities with different rules.
- Keep the evidence. The LSB has told regulators to check how supervision runs in practice, so firms will be asked.
Firms still need a clear answer on which tasks unadmitted staff may perform. This sets the line out with the authorities behind it.
What does the LSB review add?
Context, and a warning about what comes next.
The Legal Services Board put out its final report on 27 July 2026. It found that regulators had missed chances to settle two different readings of the Act long before this case arose. In 2022 CILEx Regulation put its reading to the SRA. The SRA set out a different one. Nobody pushed the clash any higher, and no enforcement action followed.
Two things follow for firms. Regulators must strengthen the checks that show them how supervision really runs. And the LSB will review guidance across the other reserved legal activities, looking for the same pattern of split readings.
What should a firm do first?
Start with a list, not a policy.
Work out who in the firm is doing tasks inside the conduct of litigation and is not authorised. In most firms that is a longer list than partners expect. Paralegals are the obvious group. Trainees, apprentices, costs staff and outsourced case handlers all belong on it too.
Then match each name to an authorised person. If a name has no clear match, that is the gap the judgment cares about.
Only after that is a policy worth writing. A policy drafted before the list is a statement of hope.
Common mistakes
Reading the Court of Appeal as a return to 2024. It restored handing work down. It did not hand over a free rein.
Treating supervision as a job title. A named supervisor who never sees the file is exactly the set-up the judgment tests.
Assuming advocacy comes with it. Rights of audience sit under a separate activity with separate exemptions.
Leaning on an old regulator letter. The guidance has moved twice since December 2024, and five regulators plus the Law Society have republished.
Leaving no trail. Assurance is now an open LSB expectation, which makes an undocumented set-up hard to defend.
Official sources
Our news coverage of the LSB review has the regulatory findings in full. For related compliance work, see the return of accountants’ reports.
Last updated
3 August 2026. Due for review when the SRA publishes its further supervision guidance, which it is writing with the Law Society.