Can Law Firms Outsource Paralegal Work Under SRA Rules?

Can a law firm outsource paralegal work and stay compliant with the SRA? It is a question that comes up in almost every conversation with a practice manager or partner considering outsourced support. The short answer is yes, provided the work is properly supervised, and the position has just been reaffirmed by the Court of Appeal.

The starting point: supervision, not qualification

Under the Legal Services Act 2007, certain activities (including the conduct of litigation) are reserved to authorised individuals such as solicitors. That has never meant only a solicitor can touch the file. It has always meant that an authorised individual must retain responsibility, direction and supervision over the work, wherever the person actually doing the task sits, whether that is a trainee in the next room or a paralegal working remotely.

What the Mazur decision confirmed

On 31 March 2026, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in CILEX and others v Mazur and others [2026] EWCA Civ 369, overturning an earlier High Court ruling that had cast doubt on this model. The Court of Appeal held that an unauthorised person may lawfully perform tasks within the conduct of litigation, for and on behalf of an authorised individual, provided that individual retains responsibility and puts in place appropriate supervisory arrangements. The authorised individual, not the paralegal or caseworker, is the one “carrying on” the conduct of litigation in the eyes of the law.

The Law Society’s practice note following the decision, published on 13 April 2026, confirmed that firms could broadly resume the delegation model they had operated under for years. For firms that had paused or scaled back delegation to paralegals while the High Court decision stood, this was a welcome and fairly complete reversal.

What it means to outsource paralegal work in practice

For a firm considering outsourced paralegal support, the practical takeaway is that location and employment status are not the issue. Supervision is. That means:

• A named fee earner within the firm retains direction, management and supervision of the work at all times.
• Work product is reviewed and signed off by that fee earner before it is relied on, filed, or sent to a third party.
• The paralegal does not exercise independent professional judgement or provide legal advice; they perform tasks the fee earner directs.
• The firm, not the outsourced provider, remains the party carrying on the conduct of the matter, and the party the client and the SRA look to for accountability.

This is also why, when you outsource paralegal work, a dedicated paralegal or team, rather than a shared or pooled resource, matters: it keeps the working relationship close to how a firm would supervise an in-house junior, which is precisely the model the courts and the SRA have always recognised.

What outsourcing does not change

Choosing to outsource paralegal work does not transfer regulatory responsibility. It does not touch client money; a properly structured arrangement should say explicitly that the provider never holds it. It does not remove the firm’s obligation to check work before it goes out the door. And it should never be dressed up as anything other than what it is: capacity, delegated under supervision, at a flat and predictable cost.

Firms that outsource paralegal work successfully tend to treat supervision as a design feature, not an afterthought. The official Court of Appeal summary is worth reading in full if you want the judgment itself rather than a secondhand account. If you are weighing this up for your own firm, the How It Works page sets out exactly how supervision is structured in practice, and the Pricing page includes a calculator so you can compare the real cost of an in-house hire against a flat-rate package.