Posted by Jess Irwin, senior consultant, and Jen Dunlop, managing director of Compliance Office, on behalf of Legal Futures Associate VinciWorks [1]
Jen Dunlop
The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Julia Mazur & others v CILEX & others on 31 March brought a collective sigh of relief across the legal profession.
Paralegal teams could return to work. Law centres could resume normal operations. Firms that had restructured on the basis of an incorrect interpretation of the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) could begin to unpick the damage.
But relief should not obscure the bigger picture. People lost their jobs. Firms restructured unnecessarily. Six months of uncertainty, cost and professional anxiety could have been avoided. The Court of Appeal itself observed that “it is hard to see why this litigation went on as long as it did”.
That line deserves to sit at the centre of any analysis of this case, because the answer to it points directly at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Law Society.
A settled practice, unsettled
For decades, the delegation of litigation tasks from authorised to non-authorised individuals under proper supervision has been standard professional practice. It is how law centres operate. It is how high-volume claims firms function. It is how most litigation teams are structured.
Nobody seriously questioned the lawfulness of this arrangement until the High Court, assisted by submissions from the SRA and the Law Society, concluded last September that non-authorised staff could assist with litigation work but could not carry it out, even under genuine supervision.
The distinction was immediately problematic. Where exactly does ‘assisting’ end and ‘carrying out’ begin?
The profession spent six months asking that question without a satisfactory answer, because there was not one. The line the High Court drew had never existed in practice, in regulation or, as the Court of Appeal has now confirmed, in law.
Where the regulators went wrong
The LSA never intended to prohibit the established and well-regulated practice of solicitors delegating work to unqualified individuals.
The SRA’s own effective supervision guidance, which predates this case by some years, already required solicitors to maintain genuine oversight of delegated work. The framework was there. It has always been there.
What the SRA and the Law Society persuaded the High Court to accept was an inference drawn from the absence of an explicit supervision exemption in schedule 3 of the LSA for the conduct of litigation.
The Court of Appeal has firmly rejected that inference. It found that no such conclusion could safely be drawn, given that the different reserved legal activities each carry “their own histories and practices”.
In plain terms, the regulators’ argument was wrong. The bodies the profession turns to for authoritative guidance used their considerable influence in High Court proceedings to support a position that proved legally incorrect.
The consequences of that error were felt by real people working in real firms. That is not a minor procedural footnote. It is a serious question about how regulatory interventions of this kind are made and tested.
What the judgment actually requires
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that non-authorised individuals may lawfully carry out tasks within the conduct of litigation, provided they do so for and on behalf of an authorised individual who retains genuine overall responsibility and provides effective supervision.
The word ‘genuine’ carries real weight here. The court was explicit that the degree of supervision required will depend on the circumstances.
For complex or high-risk matters, prior approval before taking steps may be necessary. For routine work, regular review meetings and sample-checking may be sufficient. The judgment does not prescribe a single model. It requires proportionality and documented oversight.
The court also confirmed a helpful, if not exhaustive, list of tasks unlikely to fall within the conduct-of-litigation definition. These include pre-litigation work, giving legal advice in connection with proceedings, conducting correspondence with the opposing party, gathering evidence and instructing experts or counsel.
What firms should do now
The temptation will be to exhale and return to business as usual. That would be a mistake. If supervision arrangements were not particularly robust before September 2025, they need to be now.
The Court of Appeal’s conclusions rest entirely on the quality of supervision in place. A failure to supervise genuinely and effectively is not just a regulatory risk. Under the LSA, it is a criminal offence.
Firms should act on the following:
- Re-read the SRA’s effective supervision guidance [2] and audit current practices against it, noting that the guidance is currently under review.
- Read the Law Society’s updated practice note, Mazur and the Conduct of Litigation [3], published 13/4/26.
- Maintain a clear, living record of which staff are authorised and which are not.
- Ensure every litigation matter has a named authorised individual with genuine overall conduct and responsibility, and that all staff understand who oversees each task.
- Produce a written delegation and supervision policy if one does not exist, and document supervision provided in each matter file, including time spent.
- Treat all formal litigation steps as falling within the conduct of litigation definition unless there is a clear reason otherwise.
- Consider whether authorised staff should sign formal court documents on behalf of more junior non-authorised team members as a practical way to evidence appropriate oversight.
- Audit ratios for authorised-to-non-authorised staff, particularly in high-volume claims environments, where the SRA’s existing guidance already flags this.
- Beware of assuming it is simply back to pre-September business as usual, particularly if supervision systems were not strong to begin with.
For high-volume claims firms, point eight deserves particular attention. The court accepted that models in which authorised individuals delegate the conduct of litigation to non-authorised staff are lawful, but the supervision must be real.
A nominal authorised supervisor overseeing a large team with minimal genuine engagement does not meet the standard and will not withstand scrutiny.
Supervision is now front and centre
The Mazur judgment has restored the profession’s ability to operate as it always has. It has also placed supervision under a sharper spotlight than ever before. The SRA will update its guidance. Firms will be expected to demonstrate, with documentation, that their arrangements are substantive.
What the last six months have shown is that supervision cannot be treated as a background compliance obligation quietly managed somewhere in a firm’s operational processes. It is now a frontline legal requirement, with a Court of Appeal judgment supporting it.
The profession can be relieved that common sense has prevailed. It should also be clear-eyed about what happened. The SRA and the Law Society intervened in High Court proceedings, supported a legally incorrect position, and the profession paid for that error with six months of disruption, redundancies and unnecessary cost.
That warrants more than a quiet acknowledgement in a judgment footnote. It warrants a serious conversation about how both bodies exercise their influence in litigation, and what accountability looks like when they get it wrong.