Published by Search the Law | May 2026
On 31 March 2026, the Court of Appeal in Julia Mazur & Ors v Chartered Institute of Legal Executives [2026] EWCA Civ 369 restored the delegation model that had been thrown into doubt by the High Court six months earlier. The Master of the Rolls, the Chancellor of the High Court and Andrews LJ unanimously held that an unauthorised person can perform any litigation task on behalf of an authorised individual who retains responsibility. Firms can breathe again. The sky is not falling.
The legal press covered the headline within hours. What no one has done is map the Court of Appeal’s framework against the other authorities that define the boundaries of lawful delegation — and turn that cross-analysis into something a managing partner, a COLP or a practice manager can use on Monday morning.
That is what this piece does.
This article was written with the help of a Full Brief generated on Search the Law. Every paragraph reference below is a deep link to the verified judgment on the National Archives. If you want to check what a case says before you take my word for it, click the number.
The cross-analysis below works through six key authorities: Mazur at both levels, Baxter v Doble, Nazeer v SRA, Brett v SRA, and Vehicle Control Services v Langley. From them, six questions emerge that every firm running a paralegal delegation model needs to answer. Not in six months. Now.
The framework in thirty seconds
The Court of Appeal established a two-part linguistic analysis. The phrase “carry on the conduct of litigation” has two elements: the tasks (the “conduct of litigation,” defined in paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 to the Legal Services Act 2007) and the responsibility (the “carry on” — direction, control and professional accountability for those tasks). The Chancellor put it plainly at [21]: “The ordinary meaning of the words: ‘conduct of litigation’ refer to the tasks to be undertaken, whilst the words ‘carry on’ refer to direction and control of, and responsibility for, those tasks.”
An unauthorised person who performs litigation tasks does not commit an offence under section 14 — provided an authorised individual genuinely retains responsibility. The Court expressly rejected the distinction drawn below between “supporting” a solicitor and “conducting litigation under supervision,” holding it was legally incorrect: at [27].
That is the good news.
The harder news is what the Court of Appeal did not do. It did not prescribe a minimum level of supervision. It did not define where genuine oversight ends and nominal supervision begins. It said that the detail of supervision is a matter for the regulators, not the courts: at [25] and [187]. It noted — with the SRA’s own concession — that universal prior approval of every document is not required: at [109]–[110].
What this leaves is a framework with a clear principle and an uncertain boundary. The principle: retained responsibility makes delegation lawful. The boundary — how much involvement is enough — is not defined. The authorities that fill the space around that boundary are where the real risk sits.
Question 1: Is your supervising solicitor genuinely in charge — or just lending their name?
This is the decisive question. The Court of Appeal identified it as the central judicial preoccupation, and every other question flows from it.
The test is functional, not formal. It does not matter what you call the arrangement. What matters is whether, assessed on the facts, the authorised solicitor retains direction, control and both formal and professional responsibility for the delegated work: Mazur (EWCA) at [25] and [187].
The contrast case is Baxter v Doble. There, Cavanagh J assessed the totality of activities and found that the respondents had crossed the line because they did everything a solicitor would have done — drafting pleadings, instructing counsel, paying court fees, corresponding with the other side, and managing procedural compliance: at [208] and [211]. The respondents had, in substance, assumed responsibility for the litigation. No authorised individual was retaining oversight. The full-service package, viewed in the round, was the conduct of litigation.
For a law firm, the equivalent scenario is a named supervising solicitor who does not review substantive decisions, is not available to the paralegal for guidance, and whose involvement is limited to signing off completed files after the event. On a totality assessment, a tribunal could find that the paralegal — not the solicitor — was directing the litigation.
What to do: Gather and preserve documentary evidence of the supervising solicitor’s active involvement. File notes, email approvals of key decisions, attendance at strategy discussions, substantive review of pleadings before filing. The evidence needs to show that the intelligence and decision-making behind the litigation tasks originates with the solicitor, even if the paralegal executes them.
Question 2: What happens when the SRA’s own guidance turns out to be wrong?
One of the most striking features of the Mazur litigation is that the SRA’s own guidance was found to be wrong — at both levels of court.
In the proceedings below, HHJ Simpkiss relied on a letter from the SRA dated 2 December 2024 which stated that employees of an authorised firm were permitted to undertake reserved legal activities by virtue of section 21(3) of the 2007 Act. Sheldon J found this letter “clearly wrong”: Mazur (EWHC) at [63]. The Court of Appeal at [196] agreed, expressly noting that the SRA subsequently reversed its position on section 21(3).
This creates an awkward reality for firms. The regulator’s interpretation of the statute was rejected by the courts. A firm that relied on that interpretation in good faith was, it turns out, relying on an incorrect statement of the law. The Court of Appeal made clear that statutory interpretation is for the courts, not the regulators — but many firms will have structured their delegation models on what the SRA told them.
The SRA’s current post-Mazur position. Following the 31 March 2026 judgment, the SRA has welcomed the Court of Appeal’s “clear direction” and is now reviewing its Effective Supervision Guidance to bring it into line with the Court’s framework. Comprehensive updated SRA guidance is awaited. In the meantime, the Law Society has published a new practice note on conducting litigation post-Mazur, which is the interim reference point for firms. Anyone designing or reviewing a delegation model in May 2026 should treat the Court of Appeal’s framework as the authoritative statement of the law and the Law Society practice note as the most current professional-conduct overlay, while monitoring the SRA’s hot-topic page for the updated supervision guidance when it lands.
What to do: Do not rely on any superseded SRA communication as your sole basis for permitting paralegal delegation in litigation. Check every piece of regulatory guidance against the statutory framework as interpreted by the courts. If your delegation model was built on the 2 December 2024 letter or similar pre-judgment communications, review it against the Mazur (EWCA) framework and document the review. The SRA’s shifting position may also support a statutory defence under section 14(2) if it ever comes to that — the vagueness of the regulatory landscape was a factor that supported the defence in Baxter at [229] and [231].
Question 3: Is your COLP set up to fail?
The Nazeer authority is the one most firms have not absorbed, because it addresses a different facet of delegation risk: systemic oversight failure by the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice.
In Nazeer v SRA, the High Court upheld a finding that a solicitor who was the firm’s COLP had facilitated an abuse of process — through inaction. The COLP had received repeated judicial warnings about the conduct of the firm’s immigration department, including one which Lavender J at [12] accepted as “hard to think of a starker warning from the judiciary.” The COLP did nothing. The court held that facilitation can be established by inaction as well as by positive acts: at [18].
Critically, the COLP had no personal knowledge of the specific claims that constituted the abuse. His failure was a management failure: he did not investigate, did not implement corrective measures, and did not discharge the proactive monitoring duty imposed by rule 8.5(c) of the SRA Authorisation Rules 2011: at [7]–[8].
For a firm running volume litigation with significant paralegal delegation, this creates a specific, identifiable risk. If court criticism of work quality emerges — or if the regulator raises supervision concerns, or if internal review reveals that paralegals are making independent decisions without oversight — and the COLP does not act on those signals, the Nazeer principle is engaged.
What to do: The COLP needs a documented compliance monitoring programme specifically addressing paralegal supervision in litigation. This means a mechanism for capturing systemic signals (court criticism, opponent complaints, internal audit findings), a documented escalation protocol, and — crucially — records showing what corrective action was taken in response to each identified issue. The records are the defence. Without them, inaction looks like facilitation.
Question 4: What happens when a paralegal’s document misleads the court?
This is where Brett v SRA intersects with the delegation framework.
A solicitor who delegates litigation tasks retains professional responsibility for the delegate’s performance: Mazur (EWCA) at [19], [25] and [143]. That responsibility includes the duty not to mislead the court. In Brett, the Divisional Court held that a solicitor who allowed the court to proceed on an incorrect factual basis — due to a mistaken belief that professional privilege prevented correction — was guilty of recklessly misleading the court: at [78] and [100]. The definition of recklessness is awareness of an unreasonable risk that the court will be misled.
Applied to a delegation context: if a paralegal files a document containing an inaccuracy, and the supervising solicitor becomes aware of it and fails to correct it, the solicitor risks a finding of reckless breach. The court in Brett at [86] identified four options available to a solicitor facing this position — seeking a waiver of privilege, making a suitably limited correction, disclosing the position to instructed counsel, or withdrawing from the case — and the existence of those options undercuts any argument that inaction was unavoidable.
What to do: Supervising solicitors must actively review court documents filed by paralegals for accuracy. There needs to be a clear escalation path: when an inaccuracy in a filed document comes to light, the solicitor seeks independent advice promptly and takes corrective steps. Lord Thomas CJ at Brett [110] identified seeking senior or independent advice as the appropriate course. Firms should train staff on the protocol — not as a theoretical exercise, but with worked examples of what to do when a filed document contains an error.
Question 5: Can your paralegals attend court hearings — and if so, on what basis?
This is the question most firms have not thought through carefully, because before Mazur and Vehicle Control Services, the answer was assumed to be obvious. It is not.
A paralegal attending court to conduct advocacy must satisfy four cumulative conditions for exempt person status under Schedule 3, paragraph 1(7) of the 2007 Act: they must be assisting in the conduct of litigation; acting under the instructions and supervision of an authorised litigator; appearing in chambers proceedings; and not in reserved family proceedings.
The county court decision in Vehicle Control Services v Langley gave these conditions sharp teeth. DJ Pratt held that advocacy alone does not satisfy the first condition — the distinction between conducting litigation and exercising a right of audience must be maintained. An advocate who has taken no steps in the litigation other than receiving a brief to attend a hearing has not been “assisting in the conduct of litigation”: at [20] and [42]. The court also required a direct and sufficient nexus between the paralegal and the supervising solicitor, approximating the traditional managing clerk relationship: at [22]. Sub-contracting through an external advocacy agency did not satisfy this.
Although Vehicle Control Services is a county court decision and not binding, the analysis is detailed and principled, and no higher authority has addressed the point. Until one does, firms should treat it as the working standard.
What to do: Before sending a paralegal to any hearing, verify three things: that the paralegal has genuinely been involved in assisting with the conduct of that specific litigation before the hearing (not just briefed on the day); that the supervising solicitor has directly instructed and is supervising the paralegal in the proceedings; and that the hearing is of a type that satisfies the “in chambers” condition. Document the paralegal’s prior involvement in the litigation file. Avoid using external advocacy agencies or sub-contracted advocates — Vehicle Control Services found those arrangements insufficient.
Question 6: Is your statutory defence disappearing?
The statutory defence under section 14(2) of the 2007 Act provides that a person does not commit an offence if they did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that their conduct was unlawful.
In Baxter, the defence succeeded. Cavanagh J accepted that the vagueness of the statutory definition, the absence of clear case-law guidance, and good-faith reliance on regulatory advice all supported a finding that the respondents could not reasonably have been expected to know they were conducting litigation: at [229] and [231]. But that was in 2023, before the Court of Appeal clarified the framework.
After Mazur (EWCA), the defence is narrower. A person operating a delegation model after 31 March 2026 will find it harder to argue that the law was unclear. The two-part analysis is now established at Court of Appeal level. The non-exhaustive list of activities unlikely to fall within the conduct of litigation at [193] provides practical guidance. The responsibility-retention framework is definitive.
This does not mean the defence is dead. The Court of Appeal did not prescribe minimum supervision thresholds, and Baxter at [228]–[229] acknowledged that the words “the prosecution of proceedings” remain vague and uncertain. In genuine borderline cases — where a firm’s delegation model falls into the grey zone between clearly lawful delegation and clearly unlawful assumption of responsibility — the defence may still have purchase. But it will require more than a general assertion of uncertainty. It will require evidence of specific steps taken: professional advice obtained, regulatory guidance consulted, compliance protocols designed and documented.
What to do: If any aspect of your delegation model predates Mazur (EWCA), document the legal basis on which it was designed. If you relied on SRA guidance or professional advice that proved incorrect, preserve that evidence — it supports the defence. Going forward, review your model against the Mazur (EWCA) framework and record the review contemporaneously. The defence requires the court to assess whether the defendant could reasonably have been expected to know they were conducting litigation, with regard to the whole of the circumstances: Baxter at [227]–[231]. Make sure you can demonstrate good faith in relation to each category of delegated task.
The bigger picture
What Mazur (EWCA) has done is not just confirm that paralegal delegation is lawful. It has established the terms on which it is lawful — and those terms create obligations as well as permissions.
The permission is broad: an unauthorised person may perform any litigation task on behalf of an authorised individual who retains responsibility. The obligation is real: that retention of responsibility must be genuine, documented and systemic. It is not discharged by putting a solicitor’s name on a file and hoping for the best.
For firms that take this seriously — that build proper supervision structures, document their decision-making, train their staff on escalation protocols, and maintain compliance records — Mazur provides a clear and workable framework. For firms that treat supervision as a formality, the case law is now sufficiently developed that a claim of ignorance will be very difficult to sustain.
The six questions above are not theoretical. They are the questions that will be asked if the SRA investigates your delegation model, if a court challenges your paralegal’s right of audience, or if a client brings a complaint about the supervision of their matter. The time to answer them is before any of that happens.
Authorities cited
| Case | Citation | Court | Date | Judgment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Julia Mazur & Ors v Chartered Institute of Legal Executives | [2026] EWCA Civ 369 | Court of Appeal (Civil) | 31 March 2026 | Open |
| Julia Mazur & Ors v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP | [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB) | High Court (KB) | 16 September 2025 | Open |
| Craig Baxter v Sarah Doble & Anor | [2023] EWHC 486 (KB) | High Court (KB) | 8 March 2023 | Open |
| Nazeer v Solicitors Regulation Authority | [2019] EWHC 37 (Admin) | High Court (Admin) | 14 January 2019 | Open |
| Brett v The Solicitors Regulation Authority | [2014] EWHC 2974 (Admin) | High Court (Admin) | 11 September 2014 | Open |
| Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Stephen Langley | [2026] EWCC 1 | County Court | 7 January 2026 | Open |
Statutory framework: Legal Services Act 2007 — section 14 (offence), section 14(2) (statutory defence), section 21(3), Schedule 2 paragraph 4 (definition of “conduct of litigation”), Schedule 3 paragraph 1(7) (exempt person status). SRA Authorisation Rules 2011, rule 8.5(c).
Current regulatory guidance: SRA hot topic — Response to Mazur v CILEX judgment; SRA Effective Supervision Guidance (under review); Law Society practice note — Mazur and the conduct of litigation.
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Disclaimer: This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. The legal propositions and case references should be independently verified against the original judgment texts. Statutory references are subject to amendment and should be checked against current legislation.
All authorities cited are grounded against verified judgment texts available on caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk.