Mazur Appeal Upheld: Court of Appeal Clarifies Delegation, Supervision and the Conduct of Litigation

CILEX and others v Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369

By Rao Manzoor-ul-Haque Khan, LL.M. (Glasgow) — Principal Solicitor & Managing Director, Morgan Hill Solicitors

31 March 2026

Introduction

The Court of Appeal has today handed down one of the most significant judgments on the regulation of legal services in recent years. In CILEX and others v Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369, a court comprising Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, Sir Colin Birss, Chancellor of the High Court, and Lady Justice Andrews considered who may perform litigation work within a law firm and, in particular, the extent to which litigation tasks may be delegated to paralegals, trainees, caseworkers and other individuals who are not themselves authorised to conduct litigation.

The appeal, brought by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) with the participation of the Law Society, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Legal Services Board, the Law Centres Network and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, was heard over three days in February 2026. The Court allowed the appeal and rejected the High Court's approach to delegation.

How did the case arise?

The case had relatively modest beginnings. Charles Russell Speechlys LLP had carried out legal work for Mrs Julia Mazur and Mr Jerome Stuart. More than £50,000 in fees remained unpaid, and the firm instructed Goldsmith Bowers Solicitors to recover them.

The recovery proceedings were handled substantially by Mr Peter Middleton, who worked at Goldsmith Bowers as a Senior Litigation Executive and had latterly used the title Head of Commercial Litigation. Mr Middleton was a former solicitor who had been suspended from practice in 2008. He held no practising certificate and was not himself authorised to conduct litigation, although the SRA had permitted the firm to employ him under the supervision of Mr Robert Ashall, a practising solicitor and director of the firm.

Mr Middleton's involvement was extensive. The evidence showed that he had taken instructions and given advice, drafted the claim form, submitted the claim through Money Claim Online, signed and served the Particulars of Claim and other statements of case, taken part in internal discussions about the case and instructed counsel.

Mrs Mazur and Mr Stuart, acting in person, challenged the proceedings on the basis that Mr Middleton had been unlawfully conducting litigation, which is a reserved legal activity under the Legal Services Act 2007. Mr Ashall's evidence was that he was the authorised individual with conduct of the litigation and that Mr Middleton was carrying out the work for and on his behalf. He described a regime of regular supervision, including discussions of individual cases and monthly face-to-face meetings.

What did the High Court decide?

In September 2025, Mr Justice Sheldon (Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB)) drew a distinction between an unauthorised person:

• supporting or assisting an authorised solicitor in conducting litigation; and
• conducting litigation themselves under the supervision of an authorised solicitor.

The first, he held, was permissible; the second was not. Employment by an authorised firm, and supervision by an authorised solicitor, did not in his view entitle an unauthorised employee to conduct litigation.

The decision caused considerable alarm across the profession. Law firms, law centres and in-house legal departments had long operated through supervised teams of solicitors, trainees, paralegals and caseworkers. On the High Court's analysis, much of that everyday working practice was potentially unlawful and, worse, potentially criminal.

What did the Court of Appeal decide?

The Court of Appeal disagreed.

Sir Colin Birss, giving the leading judgment with which the Master of the Rolls and Lady Justice Andrews agreed, traced the history of delegation in litigation from the Victorian managing clerk to the modern paralegal. He found that, well before the 2007 Act, there had been a widespread, general and well-regulated practice of delegation by solicitors to unqualified individuals, recognised and taken into account by the courts. Parliament must be taken to have legislated with that practice in mind, and nothing in the Legal Services Act 2007 was intended fundamentally to change it.

The Court's analysis turns on a distinction between performing litigation tasks and carrying on the conduct of litigation. In the Court's words, the phrase "conduct of litigation" refers to the tasks to be undertaken, whereas the words "carry on" refer to the direction and control of, and responsibility for, those tasks.

It follows that an unauthorised person who performs litigation tasks for and on behalf of an authorised individual does not thereby become the person who is "carrying on" the reserved activity. The authorised individual remains the person conducting the litigation.

Delegation is lawful, but responsibility cannot be delegated

This is the central practical point of the judgment. The Court held that an unauthorised person can 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 an appropriately authorised CILEX member, provided that the authorised individual retains responsibility for those tasks and that appropriate arrangements for supervision of, and delegation to, the unauthorised person are in place.

That responsibility is not nominal. The authorised individual retains both the formal responsibility for the delegated task (for example, service of a statement of case) and the wider professional responsibilities identified in section 1(3) of the 2007 Act: acting with independence and integrity, maintaining proper standards of work, acting in the best interests of the client and complying with the duties owed to the court.

Proper supervision remains essential

The judgment does not hand unauthorised staff a licence to run litigation on their own account. What makes delegation lawful is that the unauthorised person is genuinely working under the direction, management, supervision and control of the authorised individual.

The level of control required depends on the circumstances. The Court recognised that in some cases the appropriate degree of control and supervision will be high, and steps may require approval before they are taken. In other, more routine, cases a lower level of control will suffice, and it may be enough for the authorised individual to hold regular meetings with the unauthorised person and to sample their work.

Importantly, the Court did not accept that the 2007 Act requires an authorised individual personally to approve every step in the litigation before it is taken. A firm that operates rigorous systems and controls for routine work, such as simple debt claims, may permit proceedings to be commenced without advance approval of each individual claim, provided the authorised person retains responsibility for what is done in his or her name.

When does delegation become a criminal offence?

This is the boundary that firms and their staff must respect.

Section 14 of the Legal Services Act 2007 makes it an offence for a person to carry on a reserved legal activity when not entitled to do so, punishable on indictment by up to two years' imprisonment. Section 14(2) provides a defence where the accused did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that an offence was being committed, and under section 14(4) the offence, where it relates to the conduct of litigation, also amounts to a contempt of court.

Lady Justice Andrews put the practical test with particular clarity. The question is whether the unauthorised person is in truth acting for and on behalf of the authorised individual, who retains responsibility for the conduct of the litigation. If so, it is the authorised individual who is carrying on the reserved activity and no offence is committed. If that is not the reality of the arrangement, and the unauthorised person has in substance taken over the conduct of the litigation, he or she will be committing the offence.

The issue is therefore not the job title of the caseworker, nor who physically performs a given task. What matters is the substance of the arrangement: who retains responsibility, direction and control.

What activities amount to the "conduct of litigation"?

The Court declined to lay down an exhaustive list, observing that it is simply not possible to catalogue every task that falls within and outside the conduct of litigation.

Some points are, however, clear. Issuing proceedings, being the formal process of starting a case when a claim form is provided to the court office with the appropriate fee and the court creates a record of the claim, is within the conduct of litigation. So are formal ancillary steps such as the service of statements of case. The precise reach of the statutory words "prosecution and defence" of proceedings remains less certain. Purely mechanical or administrative tasks, such as the physical delivery of documents by post, are not the reserved activity at all.

The Court also noted a number of activities which were common ground between the parties as being unlikely, of themselves, to fall within the statutory definition, including:

• pre-litigation work;
• giving legal advice in connection with proceedings;
• correspondence with the opposing party;
• gathering evidence;
• instructing and liaising with experts and counsel;
• signing a statement of truth on a statement of case; and
• signing other documents which the Civil Procedure Rules permit a "legal representative" to sign.

This matters because not every piece of work on a litigated matter is itself the reserved activity of conducting litigation. That said, the list is a guide and not a safe harbour; whether a task in a particular case involves control of, or responsibility for, the proceedings remains a question of substance.

The Court was also careful to explain the earlier decisions in Ndole Assets Ltd v Designer M&E Services UK Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 2865 and Baxter v Doble [2023] EWHC 486 (KB). Those cases concerned unauthorised persons acting for litigants in person, where there was no authorised individual to whom responsibility could attach; they do not govern the position of supervised staff within an authorised firm.

What does the judgment mean for law firms?

The decision provides considerable reassurance to firms operating a supervised team structure. Paralegals, trainees, caseworkers and other unauthorised staff can perform litigation tasks. The key is that they must genuinely be doing so for and on behalf of an authorised individual who retains responsibility and exercises appropriate control.

The practical focus for firms should therefore be on ensuring that supervision is real rather than merely apparent. That means an identified authorised individual with responsibility for each litigated matter, clear lines of escalation, regular review of delegated work and a level of oversight proportionate to the experience of the individual and the complexity and risk of the case. Records of who is responsible for a matter and how delegated work is supervised will be the first thing a regulator or an opponent asks for if the arrangement is ever questioned.

The judgment does nothing to legitimise the unsupervised conduct of litigation by unqualified persons, by suspended or struck-off solicitors, or by anyone acting directly for a litigant in person. The Court of Appeal has restored an important practical principle while reinforcing the personal responsibility of the authorised lawyer.

Our view

The judgment brings welcome clarity to an issue that had created real uncertainty across the profession. It recognises the reality of modern legal practice: solicitors do not, and could not realistically, personally perform every step in every piece of litigation.

At Morgan Hill Solicitors, our caseworking structure includes trainees, paralegals and caseworkers, and Registered Foreign Lawyers regulated by the SRA, all working under the supervision of authorised solicitors. We already maintain strict supervisory controls, and we regard the judgment as an important reminder that delegation must always be accompanied by effective supervision, management and accountability.

The central message of Mazur can be expressed simply: you can delegate the work, but you cannot delegate the responsibility. Where the authorised individual genuinely retains responsibility, direction and control, delegation is lawful. Where an unauthorised person ceases in substance to act for and on behalf of the authorised individual and instead assumes the conduct of litigation themselves, the consequences extend beyond regulatory concern to a criminal offence under the Legal Services Act 2007.

Rao Manzoor-ul-Haque Khan, LL.M. (Glasgow), is Principal Solicitor and Managing Director of Morgan Hill Solicitors, a Solicitor of England and Wales, an Advocate of the High Court (Pakistan) and a Member of Lincoln's Inn, with more than 24 years of multi-jurisdictional post-qualification experience.

This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. The application of the judgment will depend upon the particular facts, regulatory arrangements and circumstances of each case. If you would like to discuss how the decision affects your firm or your matter, please contact us.