Legal Executives

The Legal Services Board is pulling back on proposed rules that would not allow bodies like the Law Society and Bar Council to try and “influence” their regulatory arms.

The personal experience of chartered legal executives shows that more needs to be done to stop pregnant women and new mothers being “punished” by employers, their representative body has argued.

The Legal Services Board should focus on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace instead of pushing its agenda of ‘change for change’s sake’, the Law Society has said.

A trainee chartered legal executive has spoken about how she is due to become a partner in a law firm less than 12 months after finishing her law degree.

The government, legal regulators and others need to come together to ensure that the next generation of lawyers have the chance to study social welfare law or face even more ‘advice deserts’.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives has become the first approved legal regulator to announce its intention to give its regulatory body complete structural independence.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is “not sufficiently transparent” in explaining its decisions at board level, the Legal Services Board has said, while ticking off other regulators too.

Chartered legal executives operate on a par with solicitors and it is only “professional snobbery” stopping them from being part of the solution to many current systemic problems.

The £30m that the Law Society levies on solicitors for its representative work is to be put under the microscope by the Legal Services Board next year.

New rules which clearly limit the influence the Law Society can have on the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the Bar Council on the Bar Standards Board, have been published.