Mazur appeal restores the status quo

Last month, the Court of Appeal confirmed that a person who is not authorised to conduct litigation themselves can lawfully carry out litigation tasks if they are employed to assist in the conduct of litigation and work under the supervision of an authorised person.

This overturned the original ruling in Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys, which disallowed unauthorised persons to carry out litigation tasks, even when under supervision. The original ruling had significantly impacted law firms and in-house legal teams in organisations, such as local authorities and utility companies.

Positive impact on legal firms

The appeal will mean that business can continue as usual, rather than the additional overhead of having to move the litigious caseload to qualified solicitors and fundamentally restructure their processes.The ruling will also likely have a very positive impact for trainee solicitors, paralegals and other unauthorised staff, as their purpose and role in litigation has now been confirmed.

Changes required for governance and risk management

Firms will need to ensure that they have updated procedures and have a clearly identified authorised person - a solicitor, barrister or CILEX member with litigation rights - with non‑delegable responsibility (i.e. they retain the ultimate legal responsibility for how the litigation is conducted).The SRA, Law Society and CILEX will be issuing revised practice notes and regulatory guidance to align with the appeal ruling.As an aside, since the original High Court Mazur ruling, over 750 CILEX Fellows have obtained litigation rights so they can litigate without supervision.

Read more

You can read more about the case and the appeal on the Law Gazette website.