CILEx anyone ??

Hi

Sorry if this has been posted before but does anyone here have any experience via the CILEx route as supposed to the normal LLB Law degree at uni ? I know a lot of people do this after they have completed uni, but increasingly now more people are taking this route, especially as costs are very competitive.

Would love to hear thoughts etc from anyone :smile:

Thanks

Reply 1

Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by waqqy14

Thanks

I'm going to move this to the Legal careers forum where you are more likely to get a response

Reply 2

happyinthehaze

Hi go on to Trainee Solicitor and look for a guy called Noel Linge. He will give you the phone number of Rosemary so you can chat about ilex

Or Cilex

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Reply 3

Mimir

This whole thread is a potential advert for CILEx. It's infiltrating the Legal forums.

If you want to be a CILEx, that's lovely. But a legal executive is not a solicitor. They have not got the same rights, privileges, knowledge, or professional regulations.

A CILEx can be compelled to give evidence in court against their own client. A solicitor cannot.

Depends on the sort of law you want to do. Shuffling papers and giving basic advice is the CILEx route and the resulting pay reflects that. To deal with the Law itself and be an Officer of the Court, you need to be a solicitor. IE: a lawyer.

The legal education system looks like it may be about to be overhauled by 2020, so the fees may well become less frightening. CILEx is a bargain bucket at Primark really.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 4

Mark La Rosa

Original post by Mimir

The legal education system looks like it may be about to be overhauled by 2020, so the fees may well become less frightening.

What do you mean by this? What's going to change?

Reply 5

Mark La Rosa

Original post by J-SP

The solicitors' regulator (SRA) are looking into changing the qualification process.

In part it's to try and reduce the costs to enter the profession but it's also to try and create a system that aligns all the entry points into the profession.

It means that the LPC may not exist in its current format, and could be replaced by what's being dubbed the "super-exam". It means that someone could take the exam having been an apprentice or having been a graduate.

However it is still being discussed and worked out - nothing has been made clear yet, let alone decided. Even when it is decided (expected later this year) there will be a period of transition from the current systems to whatever is decided. There's been a lot of arguments against the set of recommendations though, so I don't think it will be a straight forward to quick decision from the SRA

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I see. Sort of like in the USA, isn't it? You take the Bar Exam and you're free to work.

Reply 6

Mark La Rosa

Original post by J-SP

Yes in a similar way. The difference with the US system (as far as I know it) is that you do have to have a degree (and a law degree at that) to take a state bar exam. This system might allow you to not have a degree at all.

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Ok, now that's silly. They REALLY have to figure out a way to let people who work hard to get a Law degree enjoy the benefits. How could an employer ever hire someone who studied for an exam rather than someone who studied for a whole degree plus exam? I can't see that happening.

Reply 7

Mark La Rosa

Original post by J-SP

I'd disagree. If someone has been working in a law firm as an apprentice for 4 years and proved they are good enough, why shouldn't they be allowed to continue to work as a trainee and qualify in a similar way? It's how the system used to work a few decades ago.

Even if the system goes ahead, it doesn't mean that firms will start recruiting people with no degree and no work experience.

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You make a good point. And I agree with you as long as some experience or degree is requested to take the exam.

Reply 8

nulli tertius

Original post by Mimir

Ilex does not authorise law firms, so any CILEx offering reserved legal services to the public is doing so as part of an SRA or Council of Licensed Conveyancers regulated entity. A CILEx can be the owner or manager of an SRA regulated entity.

The vast majority of CILExs do not need individual authorisation to do reserved conveyancing or probate because they conduct it in such a manner to as to attract exemption under the Legal Services Act 2007. However for the few who don't ILEX authorises conveyancing and probate practitioners.

ILEX authorises CILExs to conduct litigation and to the sadvocacy right as are enjoyed by solicitors in the County Court and Magistrates Court in civil and family proceedings.

CILEXs can administer oaths

CILExs can become members of the judiciary.

So, lets look at what reserved activities a CILEx can't do under that title. CILExs can't perform notarial activities but neither can a solicitor. There is no right of audience before the Magistrates Court in criminal proceedings. A CILEx under that title, like 93% of solicitors, does not have rights of audience before the High Court and Crown Court in open court.

I do not know what your experience is, but there are plenty of legal execs with similar or greater knowledge than many solicitors.

In practical terms the vast majority of CILExs are subject to double regulation by ILEX and the SRA. Whilst they are personally regulated by ILEX the entities for which they work are regulated by the SRA and the SRA has power to direct that no SRA regulated entity employs someone subject to discipline.

A CILEx can be compelled to give evidence in court against their own client. A solicitor cannot.

Rubbish.

As Lord Neuberger said in .R (on the application of Prudential plc & anr) v Special Commissioner of Income Tax & anr [2013] UKSC 1:

I do not think it necessary to address this issue, as the important point for present purposes is that it is universally believed that LAP only
applies to communications in connection with advice given by members of the legal profession, which, in modern English and Welsh terms, includes members of the Bar, the Law Society, and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) (and, by extension, foreign lawyers). That is plain from a number of sources, which speak with a consistent voice.

Depends on the sort of law you want to do. Shuffling papers and giving basic advice is the CILEx route and the resulting pay reflects that. To deal with the Law itself and be an Officer of the Court, you need to be a solicitor. IE: a lawyer.

You have no real idea what any type of lawyer does, do you?

Reply 9

nulli tertius

Original post by Mark La Rosa

The real problem here is the way law firms have evolved over the last 40 years.

At one time Solicitors' Finals or Part IIs were taken at the end of articles.

When "five year men" those doing articles of clerkship over 5 years without degrees was the norm, all law firms were general practices. Freshfields used to prosecute frauds on the Bank of England, Slaughter & May did divorce work (okay, not Mr & Mrs Average's divorce but matrimonial work none-the-less).

What is this exam going to consist of?

If it is the whole gamut of the law, there will be a real risk that someone who has done crime, knock-about family, and a bit of residential conveyancing when training, won't pass exams on commercial law, and the city trainee who has done no criminal law since the first year of a law degree won't pass crime.

However if it is not the whole range of the law, we have a real risk of silo lawyers who know nothing beyond their specialities. Lawyers in a silo can and do evolve practices that are inconsistent with the law as a whole.

It isn't fair on trainees or on the firms that have invested fortunes in training, to examine trainees at the end of their training contract on areas of practice they have no experience of and it isn't desirable to have solicitors without a general knowledge of their profession.

I have taken the other poster to task about CILExs, but there is a difference between the CILEx of the last 40 years (since the demise of the old managing clerks and before the advent of the CILEx with an LPC using the CILEx route to qualification as a solicitor) and a solicitor. That is that the CILEx tended to be limited in the breadth of their knowledge because they ended up without legal knowledge of areas in which they did not practice.

Reply 10

itmakessense

i WOULD SUGGEST THE SOLICITOR ROUTE, cILEX ARE REGARDED AS INFERIOR BY SOLICITORS WHO ARE HALF AS TALENTED.
And you cannot set up on your own at a later date you have to have a solicitor under SRA rules as a so called supervisor. ilex profess to be on a par but just are not. My wife is supremely talented CILEX of 20 yrs but has been hampered by really poor and dishonest solicitor partners over the years, just become a solicitor, great advice I think