Legal Executives

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills has approved the standards for its new legal apprenticeships, allowing young people to qualify as solicitors, chartered legal executives, licensed conveyancers and paralegals through workplace-based training.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) and ILEX Professional Standards (IPS) are contacting research organisations to prepare the way for an independent review of advocacy in the youth courts.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has been given the green light by Parliament to regulate alternative business structures which provide probate services, with dozens of firms already showing an interest in taking advantage.

Mandie Lavin, the former director of the Bar Standards Board, has returned to the legal scene after being appointed the new chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx).

Chartered accountants will be able to carry out reserved probate work themselves, without the need to instruct a solicitor, from next month, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has said.

There may be a delay in giving the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) the power to grant the rights to conduct reserved probate and conveyancing work, it has emerged.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives yesterday launched an enquiry into paralegals in an attempt to clarify their numbers, where they fit in the legal spectrum, and what training should be made available.

The introduction of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is likely to be delayed yet again after four barristers won permission to appeal against the dismissal of their judicial review application by the High Court in January.

Control over the appointment of the next chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority was taken away from the Law Society yesterday after the Legal Services Board introduced new rules governing the process.

The timetable for advocates to register for the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates has been thrown into chaos as a result of the continuing judicial review of its legality. Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board has begun the search for a new chair.

The legal challenge to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is nearly at an end after the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal the High Court decision that rejected it.

A tiny number of criminal advocates has so far signed up to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), suggesting a profession-wide boycott of the scheme is holding.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has condemned the recent Legal Services Board recommendation of a civil standard of proof for use across disciplinary tribunals as “looking like a small tail wagging a large dog”.

The sanctions and appeals regimes of the frontline regulators are an inconsistent “jumble” of different powers that may protect lawyers rather than consumers, according to the Legal Services Board.

Chartered legal executives are to have full rights to practise independently after the Lord Chancellor approved their bid to handle probate and conveyancing work without the supervision of a solicitor.