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.
By Rose Traviss · 27 September 2026
Section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007 reserves six legal activities: appearing in court, conducting litigation, preparing instruments transferring land, preparing papers for probate, notarial acts, and administering oaths. Carrying one on while neither authorised nor exempt is a criminal offence under section 14.
That list is short, it is exhaustive, and almost nothing a member of the public would call “legal work” is on it.
What is not on it
Writing a will is not a reserved activity. Anybody may charge for it. There is no required qualification, no required insurance, no regulator, and no register. The Society of Will Writers is a trade body with a code its members agree to; it is not an approved regulator under the 2007 Act and it cannot strike anybody off a register, because there is no register.
Acting as a paid McKenzie friend is not a reserved activity. A McKenzie friend has no right of audience — they assist a litigant in person by the court’s permission and may not address the court. Charging for that assistance is lawful and unregulated. Nobody keeps a list.
Giving expert evidence is not a reserved activity. An expert’s duties come from Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules and from the court’s control of evidence, not from a regulator. The Expert Witness Institute and the Academy of Experts accredit voluntarily.
General legal advice is not reserved either. Nor is employment tribunal representation. Nor is drafting a contract.
What this means for the comparison
This site counts eight professions with a regulator and a register. It covers another eleven, and the reason is that a comparison confined to the regulated ones would be the wrong shape: it would imply that legal services in England and Wales are a regulated market with a few gaps, when in fact the reserved activities are the gaps and the rest of the market is open.
The who may do what map is therefore built in both directions. For each of the six reserved activities it names every profession authorised to carry it on. And it names the professions that may carry on none, which is the half no regulator publishes, because none of them regulates it.
Two reservations that are not in the 2007 Act
Worth flagging because they are easy to miss when reading section 12 as the whole of the scheme.
Immigration advice is reserved by part V of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Giving it while not registered with the Immigration Advice Authority, and not exempt as a member of a designated professional body, is an offence — under a different statute, with a different regulator, and with an offence provision people who have read the 2007 Act do not expect.
Taking control of goods is reserved by schedule 12 to the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. An enforcement agent needs a certificate from a County Court judge. Neither the activity nor the certificate appears anywhere in the Legal Services Act’s scheme, which is why an enforcement agent is not on any list of “legal professionals” and is nonetheless doing something it is an offence to do uncertificated.
Four of the six reserved activities, and both of these, are carried on by people whose registers this site reads. The comparison table puts them against each other; the professions index has a page for each.