In his 2017 paper, ‘The Legal Services Act 2007: ten years on, and mind the gaps’, Professor Stephen Mayson set out ‘a number of ways in which the Act falls short of a modern, fit-for-purpose framework for the regulation of legal services’ including that:
‘…the six reserved legal activities are not the result of any modern, targeted, risk-based and proportionate approach to regulation but are rather historical anachronisms that often emerged from political bartering and expedience in centuries past.’
This is illustrated most clearly when considering the ‘conduct of litigation’, the scope of which has been subject to debate for at least the past two decades with a string of cases bookended, as of today, by Agassi v Robinson [2005] EWCA Civ 1507 and most recently by Mazur and another v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP and another [2026] EWCA Civ 369.
Along with the other reserved legal activities, conduct of litigation as currently defined does not represent a reflection of
