https://theassize.co.uk/ Notaries, licensed conveyancers, costs lawyers, patent and trade mark attorneys, certificated enforcement agents, claims management companies and immigration advisers: who regulates them, how many there are, what each may lawfully do, and what their registers do and do not show. en-GB © 2026 Assize Data Ltd enquiries@assizedata.co.uk (Rose Traviss) Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:17:20 GMT https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/a-register-is-not-a-headcount/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/a-register-is-not-a-headcount/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/every-sitting-of-an-exam-nobody-publishes/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/every-sitting-of-an-exam-nobody-publishes/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/fifty-two-counted-two-ways/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/fifty-two-counted-two-ways/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/five-of-six-cannot-be-made-to-answer/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/five-of-six-cannot-be-made-to-answer/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/most-immigration-adviser-candidates-fail/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/most-immigration-adviser-candidates-fail/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/notaries-last-for-women-first-at-the-door/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/notaries-last-for-women-first-at-the-door/ 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%. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-ombudsman-file-nobody-publishes/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-ombudsman-file-nobody-publishes/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-profession-that-shrank-after-the-exam/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-profession-that-shrank-after-the-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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-of-regulators/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-of-regulators/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-that-is-not-in-the-act/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-that-is-not-in-the-act/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-that-revised-its-own-history/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/the-regulator-that-revised-its-own-history/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/three-point-four-per-cent/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/three-point-four-per-cent/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/twenty-four-years-of-immigration-complaints/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/twenty-four-years-of-immigration-complaints/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-275-foi-requests-produced/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-275-foi-requests-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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-regulation-costs-per-head/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-regulation-costs-per-head/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-regulators-publish-and-what-they-stopped/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/what-regulators-publish-and-what-they-stopped/ 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. Rose Traviss Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/no-occupation-code-of-their-own/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/no-occupation-code-of-their-own/ 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. Rose Traviss Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/patent-attorneys-nearly-all-can-litigate/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/patent-attorneys-nearly-all-can-litigate/ 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. Rose Traviss Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/professions-their-employers-do-not-name/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/professions-their-employers-do-not-name/ 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. Rose Traviss Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/who-owns-a-lawyers-name-in-search/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/who-owns-a-lawyers-name-in-search/ 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%. Rose Traviss Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/costs-lawyers-litigants-in-person/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/costs-lawyers-litigants-in-person/ 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. Rose Traviss Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/enforcement-agents-certificated-at-dartford/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/enforcement-agents-certificated-at-dartford/ 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. Rose Traviss Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/nobody-regulates-will-writing/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/nobody-regulates-will-writing/ 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. Rose Traviss Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/notaries-are-the-translation-profession/ https://theassize.co.uk/analysis/notaries-are-the-translation-profession/ 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. Rose Traviss Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT