CILEX (The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives)
lawyers who really understand the clients they serve. The three stages of CPQ are: • CILEX Paralegal – aligned to the role of a paralegal. Professionals who complete CPQ Foundation Stage will become an accredited CILEX Paralegal. That means they’ll be able to demonstrate the competencies specifically linked to that role, having evidenced them through assessment of their practical experience. This enables them to add value early and with an understanding of the practical issues facing clients and providers of legal services. • CILEX Advanced Paralegal – for those handling cases at an advanced paralegal level. CPQ Advanced Stage builds on the knowledge acquired in CPQ Foundation Stage and includes an additional ethics and professional responsibility module and a further period of professional experience. Professionals at this stage will also have started to specialise in a specific area of law. On completion, they’ll be accredited as a CILEX Advanced Paralegal; as well as meeting all the attributes for CILEX Paralegals they can also demonstrate competence and legal knowledge to a high specialist level, enabling them to work as specialist case handlers in any of the areas of law they study. • CILEX Lawyer – for those who want to be accredited as a full CILEX Lawyer in their chosen specialist area of law and with full practice rights. A CILEX Lawyer has completed all three stages of the CPQ, which includes compulsory ethics and professional responsibility modules and gained a minimum of three years’ relevant practical experience. The structure of CPQ means CILEX Lawyers qualify with practice rights in at least one specialist area of law. By contrast, solicitors and barristers qualify as generalists and only begin to specialise post-qualification. For their employers and clients, this means that CILEX Lawyers are ready to deliver specialist expertise and add value from much earlier in their careers.
CILEX (The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives) is one of the three main professional bodies covering the legal profession in England and Wales. The 20,000-strong membership is made up of CILEX lawyers, paralegals and other legal professionals. CILEX pioneered the non-university route into law and in 2021 launched the CILEX Professional Qualification (CPQ), a new approach to on-the-job training that marries legal knowledge with the practical skills, behaviours and commercial awareness needed by lawyers in the 2020s. The CPQ provides three levels of qualification: CILEX Lawyer, CILEX Advanced Paralegal and CILEX Paralegal. CILEX Lawyers can become partners in law firms, coroners, judges or advocates in open court. The CPQ is a tailored and flexible qualification pathway; there’s no requirement to have a university degree, but it’s still open to university students; it enables distance learning, but also enables face-to-face learning at various education providers across the UK; and it enables an ‘earn as you learn’ model to increase accessibility and affordability of entry, while still maintaining high professional standards and competencies by creating specialist pathways, specific to the area of law that practitioners operate. It’s a competency- based qualification framework, developed in consultation with employers, that acknowledges the requirements of a rapidly evolving legal and business landscape. The CPQ is a progressive framework across three stages founded on the CILEX Competency Framework. Each stage combines a focus on technical expertise and practical skills with the development of the core behaviours required to create forward- thinking, commercially minded, adaptable
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