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.
By Rose Traviss · 27 September 2026
The Costs Lawyer Standards Board publishes a column no other legal regulator in England and Wales publishes. Against each of the 789 costs lawyers on its register there is a flag saying whether that person accepts instructions directly from a litigant in person — somebody running their own case, with no solicitor between them and the costs process.
Eighty-four do. That is 10.6% of the profession, and it is a small number against a County Court where, on the Ministry of Justice’s own figures, most money claims have at least one unrepresented party. But the useful finding is not the headline.
The combination
The same register records, against each entry, whether the costs lawyer’s own organisation is itself regulated. Across the whole register the split is close to even: 410 work somewhere unregulated, 369 somewhere regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and ten do not say.
Among the 84 who accept litigants in person, the split collapses. Eighty-two of the 84 — 97.6% — work at an organisation that is not itself regulated.
Nothing about that is improper. A costs lawyer is individually regulated by the CLSB whatever their employer is, and the CLSB’s own rules travel with the person. But it is worth saying plainly what it means for the client, because the client is by definition the person least equipped to work it out: if something goes wrong with the firm rather than with the individual — client money, a professional indemnity claim, a complaint about the business rather than the lawyer — an unrepresented party instructing a costs lawyer directly is, more than nineteen times in twenty, dealing with a business that has no regulator at all.
A represented party never meets this question. Their solicitor instructs the costs lawyer, and the solicitor’s own firm is regulated, insured and on the hook.
Why only this register can be asked
The Legal Ombudsman publishes complaints data by provider. The SRA publishes a firm register. Neither joins to the question “will this person act for me directly, and is the business they work for regulated”. The CLSB’s register answers both in one row, for 789 people, in a single JSON file it serves to anybody who asks.
That is the whole of the reason this piece exists about costs lawyers and not about, say, notaries, who number about the same. The Faculty Office publishes a notary’s languages and their fax number and not whether they will act for you unrepresented.
The figures
| Costs lawyers | |
|---|---|
| On the register | 789 |
| Accept litigants in person | 84 (10.6%) |
| Organisation not regulated | 410 (52.0%) |
| Organisation regulated (SRA) | 369 (46.8%) |
| Organisation not stated | 10 |
| Accept litigants in person, at an unregulated organisation | 82 (97.6% of the 84) |
Computed from the CLSB register as collected on 27 September 2026, and
reproduced in data/analysis.md. The regulated/unregulated flag is the
CLSB’s own; “accepts litigants in person” is its own column, not an
inference. Thirty-one of the 789 have a disciplinary or regulatory decision
published against them by the CLSB; that is a separate question from this one
and none of the 31 is named here.