Legal Executive
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Legal Executives are qualified lawyers in England and Wales who specialise in a particular area of law. Their work is similar to that of a solicitor and they are fee earners.
They undertake a series of training with the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX) and are required to pass the ILEX Professional Qualification in Law in the area of legal practice that they intend to specialise. Their academic and practical training is on a similar level to that required of a solicitor. Trainees will often work at the same time as studying in order to acquire practical skills (and bearing in mind the five year requirement for Fellowship level - see below). The courses can be undertaken at a college or through an open learning program run by ILEX tutorial college (ITC - part of the ILEX group).
There are three stages to qualification, Student, Member and Fellow. Membership is attained when all theory and practice courses and examinations have been undertaken. Members must then work under the supervision of a solicitor at a firm, the legal department of a private company or in government (provided always that their work is substantially of a legal nature rather than administrative). After two years at Membership level, they may apply to become a Fellow of the Institute. They must have, at this point, a minimum of five years practical legal experience.
Fellows are issued with an annual practising certificate, and only Fellows of ILEX may describe themselves as 'Legal Executives'.
A Fellow of the Institute who wishes to go on to qualify as a solicitor is exempt from the requirement of a training contract. For this exemption to apply, they must have attained Fellowship level by November of the year they intend to start their Legal Practice Course (a one or two year practical skills course known as the LPC, which may be taken at many universities throughout the United Kingdom). They must also have completed the academic stage of training, either by way of a Law Degree, or a Postgraduate Diploma in Law (CPE) and enrolled as a student member of the Law Society.
Fellows are required to maintain and improve their knowledge by undertaking at least eight hours of training each year (CPD - Continuing Professional Development). Four of those hours must relate to their area of specialism.
[edit] History
The modern profession of Legal Executive evolved out of the managing clerk of the 19th century. When solicitors' firms started to grow in the 19th century, they increasingly relied upon an ever-expanding number of clerks to help with drafting and organizing documents. Some of these clerks in turn became quite knowledgeable about the law and were allowed to manage their fellow clerks; hence, they were called "managing clerks."
In the 1950s and 1960s, England was hit with a severe shortage of solicitors when population growth unexpectedly raced far ahead of the number of entrants into the profession. To improve the availability of legal services, the Law Society of England and Wales began aggressive recruitment efforts to convince more 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 professional, and sponsored the creation of ILEX at the beginning of 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."[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological Study of the English Legal System, 1750-1965 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 397.
