Legal executives are a form of trained legal professional in certain jurisdictions. They often specialise in a particular area of law. The training that a Legal Executive undertakes usually includes both vocational training (a minimum of 3 years for those in England and Wales) and academic qualifications.
Legal executives are associated with different membership bodies and different rights according to geographical regions. Legal executives are recognised in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and The Bahamas. There is no direct equivalent to a legal executive in Scotland. In England and Wales they hold Chartered status and are members of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX).
England and Wales
Chartered Legal Executives in England and Wales are lawyers. They can become partners in law firms and are eligible to become judges and advocates subject to meeting eligibility requirements. As lawyers, they are subject to stringent regulation and a code of ethics as with barristers and solicitors.
Chartered Legal Executives (formerly known as Fellows of CILEX) qualify after completing their CILEX training followed by a minimum of 3 years qualifying employment. Chartered Legal Executives may do a wide range of legal work although, like solicitors, they generally specialise in one area:
residential and commercial conveyancing
wills probate work and trusts
personal injury
family law
criminal law
employment law
immigration law
litigation
practice management
After completing their academic training, trainee Legal Executives often occupy paralegal roles to satisfy the 3 year vocational stage of qualifying as Chartered Legal Executives.
History
The modern chartered legal executive evolved from the 19th-century managing clerk. When solicitor firms started to grow in the 19th century, they increasingly relied on an ever-expanding number of clerks for drafting, copying, and organizing documents. The ratio of clerks to solicitors increased from 0.86 in 1850 to 2.09 in 1900. Some of these clerks in turn became knowledgeable about the law and were allowed to manage their fellow clerks; hence, they were called managing clerks.
In the 1950s and 1960s England suffered a shortage of solicitors when population growth unexpectedly exceeded the number of entrants into the profession. To improve the availability of legal services, the Law Society began aggressive recruitment efforts to convince young people to choose law as a career. As part of this effort, the Law Society decided to turn the managing clerk into a true legal profession of its own and sponsored the creation of the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX) in 1963 as well as the change in title to legal executive. In the Law Society's own words, ILEX was intended "to stimulate recruitment to the unadmitted ranks of the professional status [...] and would offer [...] a career with proper incentives".
In October 2011, ILEX was granted a royal charter and achieved chartered professional body status. On 30 January 2012, after the charter was formally issued by Minister of Justice Jonathan Djanogly, ILEX was officially launched as the "Chartered Institute of Legal Executives" (CILEX).
CILEX
The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) was founded in 1892 as the Solicitors Managing Clerks' Association and became the Institute of Legal Executives, a company limited by guarantee, in 1963 with the support of the Law Society of England and Wales. In England and Wales the Institute of Legal Executives received a Royal Charter in early 2012 to become the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX). Fully qualified members of CILEX in England and Wales are now therefore referred to as "Chartered Legal Executives".
CILEX is a professional body which represents Chartered legal executive lawyers and other legal practitioners and law staff. It has around 20,000 members. All members of CILEX are independently regulated by ILEX Professional Standards (IPS), regardless of grade.