Court ruling on legal activities by non-lawyers

By section 13(2) of the Legal Services Act 2007, “reserved legal activities” may only be undertaken by prescribed legally qualified persons. In Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB), the High Court held that the conduct of litigation (which is a reserved legal activity) could not be undertaken by an employee of a regulated law firm (Goldsmith Bowers Solicitors) who was not a solicitor or otherwise authorised under the Act, even though their work was supervised by an authorised solicitor.

This decision is relevant to the pensions industry, in that the preparation of legal instruments relating to real or personal estate is also a reserved legal activity: the drafting of pension scheme trust deeds must therefore not be carried out by someone who is not an authorised lawyer, even if under such a lawyer’s supervision (save insofar as the supervision is permitted by the Act). Contravention of this requirement is a criminal offence.

The decision can be found here. An earlier Pensions Barrister article by Emily Campbell on this subject as it applies to pension deeds can be found here.