Four regulatory bodies stood before the Court of Appeal for three days. Not one could confidently explain what the law requires.
Not the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Not the Law Society. Not CILEX. Not the Legal Services Board.
The Mazur appeal didn’t just settle a technical point about Alternative Business Structures. It pulled back the curtain on 18 years of regulatory confusion—and left hundreds of law firms wondering whether the framework they’d built their businesses around had been an illusion all along.
Natalie Foster, chief executive of Inspire Legal Group, watched the foundations shift beneath her. She’d structured her ABS firm around regulatory guidance that assumed supervised delegation was lawful. Solicitors sat on her board. Litigators appeared in court. Specialists occupied roles they’d earned through alternative routes to practice.
“I write this as a non-solicitor CEO,” Foster explained, “someone who has practised law properly, transparently and in accordance with the Legal Services Act 2007.”
For Foster—a parent working through a degree, unable to complete the Legal Practice Course—the ABS model represented progress. The 2007 Act had opened doors closed for generations. Leadership and innovation were no longer confined to a single professional pathway.
Then came Mazur.
The case exposed what Foster describes as something “far more troubling” than a technical flaw: a regulatory ecosystem where the bodies charged with oversight couldn’t agree on fundamental interpretations. For 18 years, firms were told the framework functioned. Authorised persons remained accountable. Supervision provided the safeguard. Delegation was permissible within proper structures.
The SRA’s own Code and Effective Supervision Guidance presupposed that non-authorised individuals could undertake substantive legal work under supervision. Ratios were discussed. File reviews prescribed. Escalation procedures mandated.
Firms built compliance systems around that understanding.
When concerns arose, they self-reported. They sought clarity. They acted in good faith.
Yet in the lower court, the SRA reportedly confirmed that section 21(3) permitted employees to undertake reserved activities—an interpretation the Court of Appeal later deemed “clearly wrong.” The distinction between being regulated and being authorised, fundamental to the Act’s architecture, had been blurred by the regulator itself.
If that interpretation was wrong, Foster argues, firms weren’t exploiting ambiguity. They were relying on their regulator.
The Law Society’s position added further instability. For nearly two decades, it hadn’t warned members that supervised delegation of litigation tasks was unlawful. Its publications reflected the prevailing understanding. Its leadership publicly suggested delegation was permissible with retained responsibility.
Then, before the Court of Appeal, it argued the restrictive interpretation had been the law all along.
The Master of the Rolls called that submission “remarkable.”
“As a business leader who structured a firm around these reforms, that potential reversal feels destabilising,” Foster wrote. “It feels as though the industry was encouraged to innovate—to adopt ABS structures, to diversify routes to practice, to modernise service delivery—only to discover that the legal foundations of that innovation are less endorsed than we were led to believe.”
Something given with one hand now appears to be taken away with the other.
Foster is careful to distinguish her argument from any call to lower standards. Consumer protection remains paramount. The criminal prohibitions in sections 14-16 of the Act exist for sound reasons. Clients are the most vulnerable constituency.
But protection must be coherent.
If regulators publish guidance that presupposes lawful delegation, if they oversee that framework for years, if firms design compliance systems around it—those firms must be able to rely on it. Otherwise, Foster argues, autonomy becomes exposure.
The profession was promised a modern regulatory model: risk-based, proportionate, enabling innovation whilst preserving accountability. ABS structures weren’t an afterthought—they were the centrepiece of reform. For practitioners like Foster, establishing an ABS wasn’t simply entrepreneurial.
It was participation in the evolution of legal services. Inclusive, evolving, modern.
Now the message feels uncertain.
Have the days of autonomy and informed self-interpretation vanished? The regulatory approach appears confused—rigid enough to create contradiction, yet unclear enough to leave firms exposed. The promise of outcomes-focused regulation seems to be retreating toward rigid prohibition.
If “refer to the guidance” must now be replaced by “await judicial clarification,” what happens to the trust-based model that underpinned 18 years of practice?
Foster’s firm pays periodic fees in good faith. Membership with the regulator stems from belief in a system designed to improve legal services—to evolve them, support practitioners, create space for contribution from diverse professional backgrounds.
If that system now retreats from the flexibility it championed, it risks more than operational disruption. It signals that innovation in legal services is conditional and reversible.
Backward steps aren’t acceptable, Foster insists.
Clarity is needed. Consumer protection, always. But also protection for practitioners acting in good faith within published frameworks.
The 2007 reforms didn’t promise deregulation. They promised responsible liberalisation. Accountability without stagnation. Recognition that modern legal services require modern structures.
For those who stepped forward under that promise—who built firms, created jobs, served clients, complied with guidance—the question is straightforward.
Will the system stand behind the model it created, or quietly retreat from it?
The answer will determine whether non-solicitor contribution to client work remains viable. Whether ABS structures continue to function as intended. Whether the diversification of legal services continues or contracts.
By September 2025, Foster had practised within the framework transparently and properly. She’d believed the door opened by the 2007 Act would remain open.
Now, after three days in the Court of Appeal, that certainty has evaporated.
What’s clear is the scale of regulatory confusion. What’s less certain is whether the bodies responsible will restore confidence—or leave practitioners navigating contradictions alone.
The Mazur case may have settled one legal question. But it opened a deeper one about trust, reliance, and whether regulatory guidance means anything at all.
For hundreds of ABS firms, the wait for answers continues.
