The plan to move CILEX regulation to the SRA has been dropped.
The proposal would have moved the regulation of CILEX members to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. In theory, it offered a cleaner system, with solicitors and chartered legal executives regulated more closely together. That work has now stopped. CILEX members remain under their current framework.
Legal executives play a bigger role than parts of the profession sometimes admit. They run files (and we can say that now!), advise clients, handle specialist work and build legal careers outside the traditional solicitor route. In many high street, claimant and volume practices, they are not support staff sitting near the action.
The attraction of the transfer was easy to see and many CILEX executives and students were looking forward to being regulated under the same body. One larger regulator could have reduced overlap, made life simpler for firms employing mixed teams and helped the public understand who is accountable. The reality is clients rarely care whether their adviser is a solicitor, chartered legal executive or another authorised lawyer. They care whether the person knows what they are doing, has insurance behind them and can be held to proper standards.
However CILEX members have their own route, identity and professional history. Moving them under the SRA risked making legal executives look like a branch of the solicitors’ profession rather than a profession in their own right. It also raised questions about cost, governance and culture at a difficult time for the SRA. A regulator already under pressure over firm failures, client money and rising fees was never going to absorb another profession without pushback.
The end of the transfer talks does not end the case for reform but it does mean any future reform needs a stronger argument than “tidier regulation sounds nice”.
Author: TOF
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