A McKenzie Friend (MF) is someone who is not trained or qualified to act as a professional lawyer, but is permitted to attend court with an unrepresented litigant (a litigant in person or LIP) in order to provide moral and practical support, help them organise and find relevant documents when needed, and take notes. They do not have a right of audience, but they can, in exceptional circumstances, be permitted by the judge to speak on behalf of the LIP.

The name comes from a case, McKenzie v McKenzie [1971] P 33, in which, as it happens, the friend was a barrister but from another jurisdiction (Australia) and so had no right of audience.

In 2010 the senior courts issued practice guidance on what MFs can and can’t do in court: see Practice Guidance (McKenzie Friends: Civil and Family Courts) [2010] 1 WLR 1881.

McKenzie Friends are not regulated (though suggestions have been made that they should be, with the Legal Services Board suggesting that they satisfy “unmet need” in the market). While many are conscientious and sincere in their efforts to help litigants, on a paid or voluntary basis, there is anecdotal evidence that some take advantage of their clients’ ignorance and may do more harm than good. For a cautionary tale about a McKenzie Friend operating in the house market allegedly asking their client to pay their rent directly to them, not the landlords with whom they were in dispute, on the basis that it would then be paid into a “court rent account” (there is no such thing), see the Nearly Legal blog: ‘Court rent accounts’, McKenzie Friends and allegedly inducing breach of contract.