Overview

The Legal Services Institute has published the first part of its comprehensive review of ‘reserved’ legal activities – those which can only be carried out by appropriately authorised persons – such as the exercise of a right of audience; the conduct of litigation; reserved instrument activities; probate activities; notarial activities and the administration of oaths. It aims to inform the Legal Services Board’s policy in this area.

The research paper concludes that there are few apparent historical policy reasons for originally defining these activities as reserved and that therefore the reserved activity structure appears to be built on “tenuous foundations”. This, it argues, means there is a lack of sound criteria on which the Legal Services Board can base future recommendations for adding or removing activities from the list.

In the paper, the LSI (a policy think tank funded by The College of Law as part of its charitable foundation) traces the origins of the six reserved legal activities, as specified in the Legal Services Act 2007, and looks at the historical reasons behind why each of these was selected for reservation.


To read the article in full click ‘View Briefing’