Can a UK law firm hire a lawyer based in South Africa?
Yes. UK law firms already bring in legal support from outside the firm every day, and a growing number now fill full-time seats with lawyers based in South Africa. The regulatory principle is simple and does not change with geography: your firm's responsibility for the work, and for supervising the people who do it, stays with your firm wherever a team member sits.
Through Singularity, you choose a named lawyer and direct their work as part of your team. The lawyer is engaged by Singularity, not by your firm, and Singularity handles the engagement, payments and ongoing administration under one simple agreement.
What the regulator expects
The SRA Code of Conduct for Firms requires a firm that outsources legal activities, or operational functions critical to the delivery of legal services, to keep responsibility for that work and to supervise it properly. The Law Society's practice note on outsourcing makes the same point. The principle is straightforward: a firm can bring in people from outside the firm, but it cannot contract out its accountability.
Whether your firm records a Singularity placement under its outsourcing controls is a question for your COLP, and firms take different views. We do not make that call for you. What matters is that the arrangement is built so that the answer does not create work for you either way: you choose the individual, they work only on your matters, in your systems, under your supervision, and your own solicitors carry out anything reserved.
What this is not
It is not a shared bench. Outsourcing providers typically allocate work across a pooled team, and you neither choose nor manage the people doing it. There is no pool here. Every placement starts with a search for a named individual, you interview them, and they work for you and nobody else.
Confidentiality and client material
Every placement runs under a written confidentiality undertaking: a firm-level agreement with Singularity plus a personal undertaking from the individual lawyer. Your consultant works inside your document management system and your channels, which means client material is accessed from outside the UK. The arrangement is built for that: Singularity has International Data Transfer Agreements in place, signed by Singularity and by every individual consultant, and your firm stays the controller and decides what access to grant.
The engagement terms behind all of this are short and in plain English, and you see them before anything starts.
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