Following the EU's announcement last Wednesday (28 September 2022) of an extended ban of providing services to Russia (which is reported to include a ban on legal services), on Friday 30 September 2022 the UK announced its own expanded services ban to include "transactional legal advisory services".

Prior to last week's announcements, legal services had notably been excluded from the list of services currently prohibited under EU and UK sanctions. 

At this stage, it is not clear what legal services will be prohibited under the new UK sanctions beyond those covering "certain commercial and transactional services". As always, the devil is in the detail and the exact scope of the restrictions will not be known until the relevant legislation is published.