What are the benefits of Chartered Legal Executive status?
Supporting Fellowship benefits your business, your employee and your clients.
- Businesses benefit from a motivated workforce, enhanced staff retention and an increased number of regulated Chartered Legal Executive who can compete equally with other lawyers
- Employees gain Fellowship of a Chartered organisation, a competence based CPD requirement, they can use the term Chartered Legal Executive lawyer and use the designatory letters FCILEx
- Clients benefit from working with regulated Chartered Legal Executive lawyers and from a quality assured service.
This webinar provides a useful overview of all the steps you need to complete on your road to becoming a Chartered Legal Executive.
| 1. Academic stage | Complete the CILEx qualifications (or equivalent) |
| 2. Qualifying Experience | Qualifying experience is what we call the work experience that you need before you can be admitted as a Chartered Legal Executive. See details below. |
| 3. Demonstrate competence | Complete your Work-Based Learning portfolio using this Handbook for guidance |
| 4. Satisfy character and suitability requirements | |
| 5. Admission |
1. Academic Stage
To complete the academic stage of the training to become a Chartered Legal Executive (Fellow of CILEx) and use the designatory letters FCILEx, you must have completed the following qualifications:
CILEx qualifications
- CILEx Level 3 Diploma in Law and Legal practice AND CILEx Level 6 Higher Diploma in Law and Legal Practice; or
- CILEx Level 6 Diploma in Legal Practice (Graduate Fast Track Diploma) (having already completed a qualifying law degree)
Other qualifications
- LLB (qualifying law degree); and
- either LPC or BPTC
2. Qualifying Experience
Qualifying experience is what we call the work experience that you need before you can be admitted as a Chartered Legal Executive. For more information please see webpage – Making an application for Qualifying Experience
Qualifying experience has a specific definition in our rules and means:
- Your work ‘contributes to the provision of legal services’
- You must have completed a minimum of 2,300 hours’ qualifying experience prior to applying for admission as a Chartered Legal Executive
If you are thinking of qualifying as a Chartered Legal Executive and compiling your Work Based Learning portfolio, we advise you to have your work assessed using the qualifying experience application form.
3. Demonstrating competence
You show that you are ready to be admitted as a Chartered Legal Executive by completing a portfolio of log sheets and evidence which demonstrate that you meet the eight competencies that define a Chartered Legal Executive:
- Application of the law and legal practice
- Communication skills
- Client Relationships
- Planning and managing work
- Understanding the business environment that you work in
- Professional conduct
- Self-development
- Working with others
These competencies are broken down into outcomes and putting the portfolio together takes time to complete. We would recommend that you start to collate your portfolio once you have completed your academic studies and have at least two years of qualifying employment.
To help you to plan and put together your portfolio, please see the Fellowship Work-Based Learning Handbook along with our Week-by-Week Guidance and Examples. They set weekly goals to assist you in building your portfolio, offers guidance on the types of examples that we are looking for you to provide and explains a bit more about each outcome including whether you have to give one example or two examples.
Once you have met the qualifying experience requirements and have completed the portfolio, you can submit your portfolio for assessment, together with your Fellowship via Work-Based Learning Application Form and plus the relevant fee.
4. Character and suitability requirements
As you are applying to be a qualified lawyer, we will ask you some questions about your background, through a statement of prior conduct on the application form. As a qualified lawyer, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 does not apply, and you must declare additional information about convictions that would otherwise be treated as spent. You may be asked to complete a standard DBS check.
Transitional arrangements
The existing rules and standards will end on 31 December 2028, after this date you will no longer be able to qualify as a Chartered Legal Executive using the Fellowship Rules. Find out more. Therefore, the last date for submitting a legacy portfolio application is 31 December 2027.
We hope you are satisfied by the decision you receive, however if you are unhappy with the decision, you can appeal. More information on the appeals process can be found here.
