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Costs lawyers

Regulated by Costs Lawyer Standards Board.

Protected title

Costs lawyer

Legal basis

Legal Services Act 2007 sch.4; the Association of Costs Lawyers is the approved regulator and the CLSB its regulatory arm

Statutory basis

Legal Services Act 2007 sch.4 (Association of Costs Lawyers as approved regulator)

Collected here

789 entries

Register

CLSB’s own register

How somebody becomes one

The CLSB's three-year Costs Lawyer Qualification, taken while working in costs, followed by a practising certificate renewed annually.

How to become a costs lawyer — the full route, what it costs, and how many people joined the register in each of the last ten years.

What they may lawfully do

Costs lawyers may carry on 3 reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007.

• exercise of a right of audience — Appearing before a court to argue a case.
• conduct of litigation — Issuing, prosecuting or defending proceedings, and the formal steps in them.
• administration of oaths — Administering an oath or taking an affidavit.

What the CLSB says

Figure	Source	Provenance
about 689 costs lawyers recorded as UNVERIFIED in the estate's research: the CLSB publishes a register and no count	CLSB	secondary

“Secondary” means the figure was recorded from somewhere other than the body’s own page and has not been checked against it. It is marked because a table is exactly the format that makes an unchecked number look like a measured one.

In law, and in Parliament

11 documents on legislation.gov.uk mention this profession, 3 of them Acts, the oldest from 2003. Hansard records 4 contributions mentioning it, across 0 whole debates.

Every Act and instrument that mentions them, what was said in Parliament, and what each search phrase catches by mistake — or the same for every profession here.

What the annual reports say

This site has 789 entries from the public register. The CLSB’s own latest published figure is 763 — costs lawyers the clsb regulates, 2025 — a difference of +26.

Both are the whole profession. The CLSB closes its count on 31 December; this site's snapshot is nine months later, and the CLSB reports 52 new entrants a year. Neither number is wrong: they count different things on different days, and nobody publishing either one says which. annual report 2025.

How the regulator itself is rated. The Legal Services Board oversees every approved regulator and rates each one against three standards. In 2025 it rated the Costs Lawyer Standards Board: well-led — sufficient; effective approach to regulation — sufficient; operational delivery — sufficient. The assessment, and every regulator’s rating side by side.

What regulation costs. In 2025 the regulator’s income was £226,024 and it regulated 763 people — £296 a head. Almost entirely practising certificate fees. Neither figure is published beside the other; both are the regulator’s own. The same sum for every profession here.

Costs lawyers invited to the CLSB survey

First-tier complaints about costs lawyers

Conduct complaints made to the CLSB

Service complaints made to the Legal Ombudsman

Women among costs lawyers responding to the CLSB survey

Costs lawyers responding to the CLSB survey who are Black, Asian, mixed or another ethnic minority

Costs lawyers the CLSB regulates

New entrants to the costs lawyer profession

CLSB income

Read from the regulator’s own annual reports and core metrics. A gap in a run means the document that would carry it is not on the regulator’s site, not that the figure is zero. All 157 reports, with the sentence each figure came from.

Disciplinary findings

The CLSB shows a published disciplinary or regulatory decision against 31 of the 789 entries collected. Where it does, this site reproduces the regulator’s own words and links to their page. It does not rank, rate or score anybody.