In England and Wales, only certain legal services (‘reserved legal activities’) are restricted to regulated legal services professionals. Many people and firms can and do offer legal advice, representation, or create legal documents without being regulated specifically for those services. While, by definition, the LSB does not oversee the regulation of unregulated legal services, it can recommend to the Lord Chancellor to amend the list of legal services activities restricted to regulated legal services professionals.
This research aims to better understand the for-profit legal services providers that make up the unregulated legal services market. It seeks indications of the size of the market, and its characteristics and identifies benefits and detriments to its users. A secondary aim is to develop an effective and efficient approach for mapping the unregulated sector in the future.
The research finds a sector that is large, complex, and diverse. It finds indications of benefits such as more transparent (and potentially more affordable) pricing. It also finds consumers may experience detriment such as higher than expected costs, unreasonable delays, and poor advice.
To explore the size of the market and its characteristics, we used a framework approach to group unregulated providers into 13 broad areas of law and identify a sample of 550 providers across these areas using keyword searches online. This was supported by data from past LSB surveys and surveys of professional associations in will-writing, McKenzie Friends and the Institute of Paralegals, which are areas where existing evidence shows that unregulated providers are more prevalent. To explore consumer benefits and detriments, we searched Citizens Advice case notes (relating to the 1.6 million queries between 2019 and 2021); a survey linked from the Legal Ombudsman (LeO); Trustpilot.co.uk review data; and meetings with specialist committees at the Law Society and Bar Council.
The research report describes the overall methodology and findings, we also have more detailed scorecard reports for 11 of the 13 areas of law.
- Research report (pdf)
Scorecards
- Business structures (pdf)
- Consumer trading issues (pdf)
- Crime, rights of individuals, immigration (pdf)
- Employment (pdf)
- Family law (pdf)
- Housing, business premises issues (pdf)
- Intellectual property services (pdf)
- Legal costs (pdf)
- Regulation services (pdf)
- Tax, finance services (pdf)
- Wills, trusts, probate, estate admin (pdf)