“Keep calm and carry on the conduct of Litigation” – Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369

Thankfully the carry-on antics appear to have finally reached a common-sense conclusion, which allow the profession and the public to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.

Today’s Court of Appeal judgment in CILEX and others v Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369 is an historic and deeply welcome ruling — not just for lawyers and the wider legal profession, but for the millions of ordinary people who depend on affordable, accessible legal services. The law should work for everyone and today, it is felt that it does, a diverse profession serves a diverse public. That’s not a principle — it’s a fact.

CILEX lawyers and most legal professionals have long known and recognised the way legal teams actually work — with authorised individuals providing oversight and direction while skilled, experienced and diligent colleagues carry out the practical tasks of litigation — is both effective and entirely proper. A good law firm should be strong, independent and effective. That’s what the law and the public demand, and today, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that this is not only how the profession works, but how it is legally permitted to work.

Access to justice is one of the express regulatory objectives of the 2007 Act. A ruling that effectively required every step of litigation to be personally carried out, or individually pre-approved, by an authorised individual would have driven up costs, reduced capacity, and shut the door on justice for those who cannot afford premium rates. That would have been a profound disservice to the public interest.

For most CILEX lawyers, this feels deeply personal.

CILEX professional roots date back to Managing Clerks — the unsung backbone of the legal system for generations, qualified through experience and expertise rather than formal admission. For generations, the person who actually knew the case — who had read every document, attended every hearing, drafted every letter — was the Managing Clerk. Lord Atkin called them essential to the machinery of justice in 1940. The Court of Appeal has now reaffirmed that truth for 2026.

CILEX members bring hard won qualifications, specialist expertise, sound judgement and deep practical knowledge to litigation work every single day. The suggestion that this work was potentially criminal was not just legally wrong, it was a direct contradiction of the 2007 Act’s stated aim of encouraging a strong, diverse and effective legal profession — and frankly, an insult to everyone who has built a career in legal services through a non-traditional route.

Common-sense principles have prevailed at the heart of this judgment; Proper delegation under proper supervision protects the public, it keeps costs down, it widens access to justice, it brings diverse talent into the profession, it allows law centres to serve the people who need them most. It is how the legal system has always worked, it is what the 2007 Act was designed to support, and it is what the Court of Appeal has today confirmed.

That is not a loophole, it is the system working exactly as intended. The Legal Services Act 2007 was not born in a vacuum. It came out of the Clementi Review of 2004, which described the existing regulatory framework as “inflexible, outdated and overcomplex.” The 2005 White Paper that followed was titled, tellingly, ‘The Future of Legal Services: Putting Consumers First’. Parliament’s intentions could not have been clearer and the regulatory objectives in section 1 of the Act set it all out:

Protecting and promoting the public interest

Improving access to justice

Protecting and promoting the interests of consumers

Promoting competition in the provision of legal services

Encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession

Promoting and maintaining adherence to professional principles

This was a liberalising statute designed to widen access to justice, reduce costs, increase diversity, and bring new talent and new models into the profession and it put consumers first.

So when the Court ruled last year that paralegals, caseworkers, trainee solicitors experienced clerks and some CILEX lawyers conducting litigation (as opposed to merely assisting) were potentially committing a criminal offence every time they carried out litigation tasks under a solicitor’s supervision — the question was not just whether that was legally correct, it was whether that interpretation served a single one of the Act’s stated purposes.

The lower court’s interpretation would have raised costs, reduced capacity, shut out talented people who entered law through non-traditional routes, and made the not-for-profit legal sector — already under severe financial strain — simply unworkable. It was the most anti-consumer, anti-access, anti-competition outcome imaginable from a statute designed to achieve the precise opposite.

Today, the Court of Appeal put that right stating ‘An unauthorised person may lawfully perform any tasks, which are within the scope of the conduct of litigation, for and on behalf of an authorised individual such as a solicitor or appropriately authorised CILEX member, provided the authorised individual retains responsibility for the tasks delegated to the unauthorised person (both formal responsibility and the responsibilities identified at section 1(3) of the 2007 Act). In that situation, the authorised individual is the person carrying on the conduct of litigation.’

What makes this judgment so compelling is that none of it was really new!

The practice of solicitors delegating litigation tasks to unqualified staff didn’t begin with the 2007 Act, or the 1990 Act, or even the 1974 Act. It goes back well over a century, and the courts have recognised and protected it throughout.

In Waterlow (1883), the House of Lords confirmed that a solicitor carrying on litigation in his own name didn’t need to personally perform every task. A clerk executing the work on the solicitor’s behalf was not the one carrying on the business — the solicitor was. As the Earl of Selborne put it, what mattered was the existence of a real solicitor “initiating the whole matter… carrying on the whole business in his own name.” 143 years later those principles remain just as true.

By 1940, in Myers v Elman, Lord Atkin was stating as obvious fact that managing clerks — unqualified, but experienced — were essential to the functioning of the legal system: “The machinery of justice would not work without them.” The solicitor retained responsibility. The delegation was not just permitted — it was expected.

When the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 introduced a formal offence of conducting litigation without entitlement, the courts consistently gave it a narrow interpretation. In Agassi v Robinson (2005), the Court of Appeal was explicit: given the penal consequences, the statutory prohibition had to be restricted in its ambit. Purely clerical and mechanical activities were always outside it.

Parliament knew all of this history when it drafted the 2007 Act. It knew that law firms had operated for generations on the basis of proper delegation under proper supervision. There is nothing in the Act’s text, and nothing in its preparatory materials, suggesting Parliament intended to sweep all of that away — let alone to criminalise it.

So how did we end up in this position?

Somewhat Ironically It took two litigants in person — Mrs Mazur and Mr Stuart, representing themselves, resisting a claim over unpaid fees to Charles Russell Speechlys solicitors, which threw the profession into disarray. The Courts had to grapple with it, and in doing so, the Court reached a conclusion that nobody in the profession had previously thought represented the law.

The SRA’s own letter saying everything was effectively fine was later described by the same SRA as wrong in law. Regulators were scrambling, guidance was being hastily rewritten, Law firms were quietly restructuring their operations. The Legal Services Board launched an urgent review and found worrying inconsistencies in how different regulators had been advising their members.

All of this from a distinction — between “assisting” a solicitor and “conducting litigation under supervision” — that has no foundation in the statute, no support in the history, no basis in how legal teams have ever actually worked, and no connection whatsoever to the purposes the 2007 Act was designed to serve.

The Court of Appeal decided that the phrase “carry on the conduct of litigation” doesn’t just mean doing litigation tasks. It means directing, controlling, and taking responsibility for them. When a paralegal issues routine proceedings on behalf of a supervising solicitor, it is the solicitor who is carrying on the litigation — just as it was the solicitor, not the clerk, carrying on the business in Waterlow all those years ago.

The supervising solicitor retains full professional responsibility — to the client, to the court, and under the professional principles in section 1(3) of the 2007 Act — including the duty to act with independence and integrity, to maintain proper standards of work, and to comply with duties to the court.

Accountability is not diluted by delegation; it is preserved by it. This matters far beyond just law firms. Law centres were facing an existential crisis. Organisations providing free legal help to tenants facing eviction, families in debt, people with nowhere else to turn — running on a model of one solicitor supervising several caseworkers — were suddenly operating in deeply uncertain territory. The ratio of one authorised solicitor to five caseworkers isn’t a corner being cut. It is the only financially viable way to deliver meaningful legal help at scale.

The Housing Loss Prevention Advice Service alone was seeing 20 defendants or tenants per court day — people facing losing their homes — relying on law centre employees whose position had been thrown into doubt. Those are real people in real crisis. Today’s ruling means that vital work can continue, entirely consistently with what the 2007 Act demands — improving access to justice and protecting the interests of the most vulnerable consumers.

Regulators now need to produce clear, consistent guidance — and quickly. The judgment is explicit that the degree of oversight required will vary with complexity and risk, and that clarity is owed to both the profession and the public.

But the fundamental principle is settled. It was settled in 1883 and today the Court of Appeal simply reminded us of it. The 2007 Act said put consumers first, today’s judgment made sure that we can keep carrying on.