A decision handed down on 23 June 2026 will interest every solicitor who has ever wondered how far the Legal Ombudsman's service rulings can be picked apart in court — and how the duty to a vulnerable client differs from the duty to a client who lacks capacity. In R (Aina Khan Law Ltd) v Legal Ombudsman [2026] EWCA Civ 773, the Court of Appeal allowed the Ombudsman's appeal and restored a ruling that a family-law firm had fallen short in its service to a vulnerable client.
What the case was about
In September 2020 a client (anonymised as CXV) instructed Aina Khan Law Ltd — the firm of Aina Khan OBE, an experienced family-law solicitor — for urgent help following the breakdown of her marriage. From early on there were signs of mental-health difficulties; CXV was later diagnosed with paranoid psychosis and certified as having lacked litigation capacity since before she first instructed the firm.
The client complained to the Legal Ombudsman. The central complaint ("complaint 1") was that the firm had failed adequately to assess CXV's litigation capacity and, more broadly, had not provided a reasonable level of service to a vulnerable client. The Ombudsman, applying the Scheme Rules and the Law Society's guidance "Meeting the needs of vulnerable clients" (and SRA Code paragraph 3.4 — the duty to consider and take account of a client's attributes, needs and circumstances), found service failings and awarded compensation of £15,692.60.
The firm sought judicial review. The High Court quashed the Ombudsman's conclusion on complaint 1 and the consequential award, holding (in essence) that the Ombudsman had blurred the question of capacity with the broader question of vulnerability.
What the Court of Appeal decided
The Court of Appeal (Holgate LJ giving the lead judgment, Baker and Coulson LJJ agreeing) allowed the Ombudsman's appeal and set aside the quashing order — restoring the Ombudsman's decision and the award.
The key reasoning: a decision letter of this kind must be read as a whole, and on the basis that it is addressed to parties already familiar with the materials — not dissected paragraph by paragraph. Read that way, the Ombudsman had not confused herself. She had drawn the right distinction between two different things: a client who lacks mental capacity, and a client who is vulnerable in the broader sense described in the Law Society's guidance (mental-health difficulties, stress, and the like) without necessarily lacking capacity. The Court accepted that capacity is issue- and time-specific and can fluctuate, and held that the Ombudsman was rationally entitled to conclude, on the contemporaneous evidence, that from the point of instruction there were indicators that CXV was vulnerable and that the firm needed to respond to that.
Why it matters
Two practical points for practitioners:
- Ombudsman service rulings are hard to overturn. This is a reminder that the court will read the Ombudsman's reasoning generously and as a whole, and will not quash a decision merely because individual passages could have been more precisely worded. Challenging a service ruling on judicial review is an uphill task where the reasoning, taken in the round, is rational and adequate.
- "Vulnerable" is not the same as "lacks capacity" — and both engage your service duties. The judgment underlines the Law Society guidance and SRA Code paragraph 3.4: you must identify clients who are vulnerable (a wide category) and take account of their attributes, needs and circumstances, even where they retain capacity. Documenting that assessment — and your response to vulnerability indicators as they emerge — is exactly what protects a firm when a complaint later lands.
For any family or private-client practitioner, the case is a useful, current marker of where the line sits between robust service and a service failing the Ombudsman will sanction.
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Crown copyright material reproduced by permission of The National Archives. The contents of the judgment can be used under the Open Justice – Licence. The case law available through this platform only partially represents the activities of the courts and tribunals of the United Kingdom. This article is commentary for general information only, is not legal advice, and should be checked against the judgment itself, available in full on The National Archives.