Top Tips – Portfolio Route Litigation Practice Rights applications

Before starting your application, fully familiarise yourself with all the information provided to support your application on the CRL Website at:  Stand-alone Litigation Practice Rights.

This depends on the modules you completed as part of the Level 6 qualification you used to gain authorisation as a Chartered Legal Executive.  Find out more.

If you are unsure what modules you completed in your Level 6 qualification, please raise a query with CILEX Customer Services via your MyCILEX Account.

Start by selecting the 3 or 5 litigation cases you have assisted with that you plan to use for your Litigation Portfolios.

If your experience enables you to, select a variety of different legal matters for each portfolio.  For example if you are seeking Civil Litigation Practice Rights, you could select a divorce, a personal injury claim and a neighbour dispute.

If your role only deals with 1 particular type of case, try to select cases that contained a variety of different issues from each other.  This will enable you to demonstrate your competence across a wider range of litigation tasks.

Select cases that:

• will enable you to cover a wide range of the learning outcomes within Knowledge and Understanding Criteria within the Competency Framework;
• you were heavily involved from inception to completion – these types of cases will enable you to provide evidence against the 6 Skills Elements later (see Tip 6);
• Included ethical or conduct issues (see Tip 5).

Go into as much detail as you can when you are completing the Litigation Portfolio templates.

You are required to populate each box on the template. 

The headings for each box are as follows:

a. Provide a concise description of the case

b. The date your firm was instructed

c. Provide a description of the law arising in the case and its application to the facts

d. Describe the procedural and process issues, including the Court and, where relevant, the track to which the case was allocated

e. Explain the evidence issues arising in the case and how they were dealt with

f. Provide an overview of any ethical or conduct issues that arose in the case and how they were dealt with

g. Provide details of any funding issues arising in the case and how they were dealt with

h. Provide details of any research undertaken in the case, relating to law or procedure

i.  Provide an outline of the decision making in the case and any advice taken on strategic issues in the case

j.  Detail any advice given in the case and how it was recorded

k.  Provide information on any training or development needs identified arising from the case

l. Please identify and provide the knowledge and understanding of the learning outcomes you have met through this portfolio

When completing the Litigation Portfolio Templates, please ensure:

• you state the full title of the act and its year of issue, such as Civil Procedure Act 1997 when completing box c);
• you identify at least 1 case that included ethical or conduct issues to demonstrate competence when completing box f). If you simply confirm that each case did not include any ethical or conduct issues, the Assessor will ask you for alternative cases which may lead to delays in your authorisation;
• when completing box k), you don’t simply reference what you learnt from assisting with the case but identify what further training and development you plan to undertake after the case was closed.
• you list all the learning outcomes you feel you have covered in Knowledge and Experience Criteria in the Competency Framework when completing box l).

Once you have completed your first Litigation Portfolio template, check within the case file or case management record to see if it contains evidence you can use to meet the learning outcomes in the 6 Skills Elements, such as:

• Telephone Attendance note from a telephone interview with a new client
• Client care letters providing advice and guidance on the case, advice on costs and funding, complaints procedures and/or complaint handling
• Evidence of negotiations, ADR, settlements, Undertakings
• A case strategy you prepared
• Evidence of dealing with other parties involved in the dispute

If evidence is available, map this evidence against the learning outcomes within the 6 Skills Elements.

Identify any gaps in evidencing the learning outcomes in the 6 Skills Elements and try to ascertain if one of the other cases you have selected will contain evidence suitable to fill these gaps.

After completing your Litigation Portfolio templates, please collate your responses in each template to l) Please identify and provide the knowledge and understanding of the learning outcomes you have met through this portfolio. 

These should be mapped against the Knowledge and Understanding Criteria of the Competency Framework, to ensure  a wide coverage of the learning outcomes.

Complete Skills Logsheets for each of the learning outcomes within the 6 Skills Elements and if not exempt, for the Client Care and Legal Research Entry Skills.

You MUST provide a completed Skills Logsheet for each learning outcome.  If any are missing, this may lead to a delay in your authorisation.

If the evidence you have selected from the cases you have used in the Litigation Portfolios does not fully meet the Supporting Experience requirements for each learning outcome, add supporting statements to your Skills Logsheet.

For example, if the evidence you are submitting for Costs learning outcome in Element 2 does not demonstrate that you ‘Understand all matters relating to a summary assessment of costs and detailed costs assessments’, provide supporting statements to show your understanding on the Skills Logsheet.

If you’re unable to produce evidence against each of the learning outcomes in the 6 Skills Elements (and if not exempt), for Client Care and Legal Research Entry Skills, from the cases you detailed in your Litigation Portfolios, you can use evidence from other cases.

Please note: if you are unable to provide evidence for each learning outcome, you will not be able satisfy the regulatory requirements.  If your role has so far not enabled you to generate evidence against a particular learning outcome, we will be unable to authorise you with litigation practice rights.  In these circumstances, please speak with your Line Manager/ Supervisor to ask them to allocate you with work to enable you to generate the required evidence.

When you are ready to submit your application, please access this link to express your interest in applying for litigation practice rights and we will send you a custom KnowB4 link.  You can then submit your application form and supporting evidence directly onto the KnowB4 portal, no matter what the file size may be.