Introduction


Chairman’s foreword Enjoy your achievements, as someone once said, as well as your plans.


In a year when, as Chair of the IPS Board, I most want to look forward, it seems odd to begin by looking back. But it’s a worthwhile exercise and, in an environment where the pace of change can seem glacially slow, it can be a good confidence booster. As it is for us this year.


Looking back to what I was writing here at the turn of last year, I see a situation where:


• our proposals for work-based, structured assessment of a member’s fitness for Fellowship (ie Chartered status) were still being finalised


• our proposed new arrangements for continuing professional development among CILEx members were known but untested


• the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) had not set a date even for its completion and publication


• the fine print of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) was still being hammered out (of granite, it seemed).


Above all, our radical proposals for independent practice rights for CILEx- trained specialist lawyers were still being finalised.


Twelve months later, as WB Yeats wrote (in, admittedly, a somewhat different context) – All is changed - changed utterly. As 2013 turns into 2014 I have the happy privilege of reporting a year of truly significant achievement for IPS. The implications of this are still sinking in – but they have the potential to be real game changers in the rapidly developing environment in which modern legal services are organised, delivered and regulated.


Assessment by work-based learning is now firmly established as the mainstream route to Chartered status. The old time-based system, from which many waivers were allowed, is history and we can say confidently exactly why we know someone, at the point of admission, is fit to exercise all the privileges of a CILEx Fellow. This process is labour intensive and we have made a substantial investment in financial and human resources to make it run smoothly. We can describe – as some other legal regulators still cannot – the specific competences our members have.


In the first quarter of the year an enthusiastic group of volunteers tried and tested our new CPD scheme, which is based on self-generated personal development plans and has nothing to do with points scored or hours recorded. We successfully used a Linked In group to give us real time feedback throughout the pilot – regulators have such a long way to go with social media, and this was a real eye-opener – so were able to modify the scheme in the light of raw experience rather than the usual perfunctory forms completed after the event. From this we learnt what we need to do to inform and support members when the scheme starts to go live from next autumn. This is a pioneering initiative, commended in the LETR and being watched closely by other regulators who, like us, have been struggling with limited and unloved schemes.


The LETR itself commented favourably on many aspects of the CILEx


approach to legal education and training, commending our work-based arrangements and our precise understanding of the competence of CILEx members at the point of qualification. QASA, our other exercise in collaboration with the regulators for solicitors and barristers, finally reached completion and went live. While not welcomed in the other branches of the legal profession, the scheme for registering as an advocate, and submitting to periodic competence assessment, has presented Chartered Legal Executive Advocates with no difficulty. The courts, the public and practitioners themselves will benefit from the scheme.


Which brings me to the year’s big story. The LSB’s approval of our applications for rights of independent practice in litigation, conveyancing, probate, immigration and advocacy is, quite simply, the coping stone on the great edifice CILEx has been building over many years: partnership status, judicial appointments, the Royal Charter and now the right to run your own business as a fully qualified and competent lawyer.


The decision, announced just as the year ended, is proper reward for years of vision, strategy, detailed planning, obsessional attention to detail, blood, toil, sweat and tears on the part of the IPS Board, CILEx Council and our fantastic staff team.


Above all it represents a clear, public recognition of the achievements of CILEx members over many years. Not to put too fine a point on it, without the certain confidence that they well and truly possessed the knowledge, skills, attitudes and experience demanded by independent practice, we would simply not have gone ahead with these applications. We had to know that we could put hands on heart and say we were convinced that allowing them to practise independently would not only pose no risk to the public, but would bring significant public benefit. Our confidence was, I know, well founded and the future beckons.


Are our main efforts then at an end? I conclude with a thought from the fine novelist Hilary Mantel:


There are no endings: if you think so you are deceived as to their nature; they are all beginnings.


So, as 2014 begins, the work begins. Progress was ever thus.


Alan Kershaw Chairman


4


Professional standards for specialist lawyers


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