Analysis
Every figure in these pieces is computed from the register snapshots described in methodology, and every one that is not is attributed to whoever published it.
- There are 817 notaries, or 777, and nobody tells you which one you are looking at — Every one of these professions has two sizes: the number of entries in the public register, and the number in the regulator's annual report. They differ every time, by between 3% and 18%, and neither document says so.
29 September 2026 - Fifty-one sittings of an entrance exam, assembled from eight FOI answers — The regulator published one pass rate a year, for three years. Its replies to individual requests give every sitting from 2013 to 2016 — 1,663 candidates at Level 1, 426 passes, and a rate that swings from 0% to 68% between one month and the next.
29 September 2026 - Fifty-two, counted two ways that had never met — The CLSB says 52 people entered the costs lawyer profession in 2025. Counting qualification dates on its register gives 52. Nobody published the second number, and nothing was adjusted to make the two agree.
29 September 2026 - Five of these six legal regulators cannot be made to answer a question — The Freedom of Information Act reaches exactly one of the regulators whose annual reports this site reads — and it is the one regulating the profession whose register is hardest to get.
29 September 2026 - Most people who sit the immigration adviser entrance exam fail it — Twenty-five per cent passed in 2015/16, 36% in 2016/17, 38% in 2017/18. In 2017/18, 519 people sat the Level 1 assessment and 321 of them did not get through. No other legal profession publishes a comparable rate.
29 September 2026 - Notaries are last of the legal professions for women — and past parity at the entrance — Women are 36% of notaries against 38.5% of barristers, 52% of solicitors and 76.9% of chartered legal executives. Among notaries with under five years' experience they are 55%.
29 September 2026 - The Ombudsman took 1,306 enquiries about conveyancing firms in a year and published 36 decisions — The Council for Licensed Conveyancers prints the Ombudsman's own case volumes for its practices, 2018 to 2023. It is a longer and wider record of complaints about conveyancing than anything the Ombudsman itself puts out.
29 September 2026 - A profession lost one adviser in seven after its regulator brought in an exam — Regulated immigration advisers: 4,153 in mid-2013, 3,587 by late 2015 — a fall of 13.6%, driven by applications to join more than halving. None of it appears in an annual report. It exists in three spreadsheets released under FOI.
29 September 2026 - The smallest legal regulator in England and Wales is the only one rated sufficient on everything — The Legal Services Board rates every approved regulator against three standards. The Costs Lawyer Standards Board — 763 costs lawyers, £226,024 a year — passed all three. The two regulators covering over 90% of the profession did not.
29 September 2026 - The Bar Standards Board is not in the statute book at all — A full-text search of every Act and instrument on legislation.gov.uk for the name of the body that regulates barristers returns nothing. The Solicitors Regulation Authority manages four documents. The bodies most clients have never heard of are the ones the law names.
29 September 2026 - The immigration regulator revised its own complaints history and said nothing — In 2011 the OISC reported 291 complaints about the advisers it regulated the year before. In 2013 it reported 316 for the same year. Every column of that row changed, the total rose by 98, and no note in any report mentions it.
29 September 2026 - These four professions are 3.4% of the regulated legal profession. Solicitors are 83.6% — The oversight regulator publishes the one number none of these regulators can: how big the whole profession is. It also computes its own growth rates against the wrong denominator, and has restated the total for a date that has already passed.
29 September 2026 - Twenty-three years of complaints about immigration advisers, in one place for the first time — The regulator has published the number every year since 2001 and has never published the series. Complaints peaked at 379 in 2009/10, fell to 67 in 2020/21, and doubled to 182 in 2024/25.
29 September 2026 - Two hundred and seventy-five FOI requests to three legal bodies, and what they produced — The register this site cannot collect has already been handed over once: 1,844 regulated immigration advice organisations, 29% of them at a London postcode. Half the requests to that regulator have no recorded outcome at all.
29 September 2026 - A notary pays £861 a year to be regulated. A patent attorney pays £249 — Every legal regulator publishes its income. Every one publishes how many people it regulates. None of them divides the first by the second, and no two of the numbers are in the same document.
29 September 2026 - Sixteen of forty-two: what these regulators do not publish about the professions they regulate — Seven things a regulator could tell you about its profession, six regulators. Sixteen of the cells are empty — and twenty-one of the fifty measures here have no figure for 2024 or later.
29 September 2026 - Five legal professions, no occupation code between them — Barristers have one. Solicitors have one. A notary is a "legal professional n.e.c."; a certificated enforcement agent is filed with debt and rent collectors; a trade mark attorney is not classified as legal at all.
28 September 2026 - Ninety-one per cent of patent and trade mark attorneys hold a litigation certificate — 3,576 of 3,924 registrants may conduct intellectual property litigation. IPReg states the disciplinary position on every single entry, and across the whole register the answer is zero.
28 September 2026 - Two of these professions are represented online by their employers. Three are represented by their own Facebook. — 43% of patent attorneys have a page on their firm's website. Of 1,211 certificated enforcement agents, two do — and the eight largest enforcement companies, who employ 630 of them, name none at all.
28 September 2026 - A data broker ranks for one in four regulated legal professionals — We searched for all 9,169 people on five public registers. LinkedIn ranks for 72% of them, Facebook for 38%, and contact-scraping sites for 26% — about as often as their own firm's page about them, which ranks for 21%.
28 September 2026 - The costs lawyers who take litigants in person are almost all at unregulated firms — Eighty-four of 789 costs lawyers accept instructions directly from an unrepresented party. Eighty-two of those work at an organisation their regulator does not regulate. No other legal register publishes either fact.
27 September 2026 - A fifth of England's bailiffs were certificated at one County Court — Every certificate to take control of goods is granted by a named judge at a named court. Of 1,211 on the register, 254 were granted at Dartford. The court on a bailiff's certificate says more about their employer than about where they work.
27 September 2026 - Three of the eleven things people call a lawyer are not regulated at all — Six activities are reserved by the Legal Services Act 2007. Writing a will is not one of them, and neither is charging to sit beside somebody in court. The register that would tell you does not exist, because there is nothing to register.
27 September 2026 - Three in ten notaries work in a second language, and that is the job — The Faculty Office register's most practical column is not the address. Of 817 notaries, 247 list more than one language and 112 list French. For a profession whose work is authenticating documents for use abroad, that is the register.
27 September 2026