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Clearly this decision looks frightening for the litigation departments of a lot of firms. It appears to go against assumptions people have lived under for generations. The actual position needs clarifying.

At least, and particularly with the potential of being prosecuted for doing something that people have been taking for granted since at least the era of Charles Dickens, the judge seems (para 75) to have held back from referring Mr Middleton and Mr Ashall to the SRA for further investigation. With the SRA's reputation for making life unnecessarily difficult for people, is it too much to hope that it will at least take that paragraph seriously?

Might the issue eventually turn out to be the apparent description of Mr Middleton as 'head of commercial litigation'? I can see the argument that if that has truly been the case, then irrespective of his being employed by Goldsmith Bowers, that does not make him look at all like a person who was supporting someone who was entitled to conduct litigation under the Act, or even for that matter occupying a role that was supervised by anyone at all.