Regulation: helping you perform at your professional best

At the recent CILEx National Awards, Fran Edwards, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, said “don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, because you can”. It’s an uplifting message and captures precisely the ethos and offering of CILEx. But what does it mean when it comes to regulation?

As a regulator, part of our job is concerned with what you can’t do. This is to keep standards high, protect consumers’ interests and protect your reputation as a regulated professional. Being a member of a professional body comes with responsibilities as well as rights. Through the Code of Conduct, we set high standards of professional behaviour. This gives your clients important reassurance.

We also make sure professionals at certain grades are developing their professional knowledge through CPD – keeping up to date and relevant and using reflection to drive improvement. And when things do go wrong, we investigate what has happened – always with an open mind, and always treating people fairly and respectfully. All this sets you apart from other professionals who operate without regulation.

But there’s more to CILEx Regulation than that. A lot of the time, we’re concerned with what you can do. We authorise people as Chartered Legal Executives. Through practice rights, we authorise people to work in reserved areas of legal work without supervision. And we offer a unique level of service to people interested in setting up a law firm – welcoming a growing number of enquiries and applications from lawyers interested both in traditional firms and alternative business structures.

So while you’re completing your annual membership and regulatory activities, if you’re feeling motivated to take your career to the next level or just want to talk through your options, do get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.