Coupland: Collaborating with CILEx Regulation
The uncertainty caused by the Mazur ruling has not discouraged would-be lawyers from studying with CILEX, with new registrations up 18% this year, its chief executive has revealed.
Jennifer Coupland said she wanted to increase the number of CILEX-qualified lawyers to raise its profile and solidify its position as the third branch of the legal profession.
Ms Coupland was speaking ahead of this week’s launch of CILEX’s new five-year strategy, which sets out four objectives: to create a “proud” professional community, “drive change and elevate CILEX’s profile”, provide “excellent education for a growing profession” and “build firm foundations for a sustainable future”.
Key to bringing this to life, she said, was growing the number of CILEX professionals – many firms have one or two but she wanted this to increase.
“CILEX lawyers are a tremendous asset to the legal system – we need to have more of them,” she said.
“They are agents for change in the legal system. And we want them to feel that their professional body is standing behind them, that they are members of a body that adds value for them at every stage of their career, from thinking about getting into the law all the way up to being a senior fellow.”
This is especially so now that the still relatively new CILEX Professional Qualification – which went live in 2021 – comes with independent practice rights, making new chartered legal executives Mazur-proof.
“We’ve had a very positive start to 2026,” she added – 18% more registrations in the first half of 2026 than the same period in 2025.
There would be some irony if, by training a spotlight on CILEX, Mazur actually brought in more students, despite the angst it caused many existing members.
CILEX has 17,000 members, of whom around 7,500 are chartered legal executives, 120 associate prosecutors at the Crown Prosecution Service, and the rest at various other stages of their legal careers.
Ms Coupland had only been in post for a fortnight when the original Mazur bombshell hit last September and described the “challenge” of the period – supporting members, telling the sector about the negative impacts on the wider system, and then appealing, with the Law Society, Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Legal Services Board all on the other side.
The Court of Appeal agreed with CILEX’s interpretation of the law, of course. “It does feel like getting that put to rights and clarifying the position on the conduct of litigation has now put us in a position to move forward,” she said.
“I think people were proud that their professional body stood up for them in the face of almost all of the rest of the legal system.”
But equally she acknowledges the need to restore trust and confidence with members, who felt let down by the advice given in previous years.
“There were things that historically we didn’t do as well as we should have done. And I absolutely take that on the chin,” Ms Coupland said.
“It’s something we need to work on going forward. We want to make sure that we’re giving the best advice at every turn to our members.
“But it’s taken a Court of Appeal judgment to clarify the position here. And I’m sure that when the Legal Services Board finally publishes its report [on what regulators and representative bodies did over litigation rights], it will be clear that these misinterpretations historically were common across the board and CILEX was not the only organisation that was struggling to get this right…
“It’s one of my key priorities over the next year to work as hard as I possibly can to try to earn that trust and confidence back.
“Part of that is reaching out to members through our strategy, building that proud professional community, improving communications with our members and improving the value they get from being a member of this professional body.”
Mazur highlighted shortcomings in the Legal Services Act regime and Ms Coupland supports a review of the legislation.
“The Act is nearly 20 years old and since it became law, the legal services world has changed considerably. So I do think it needs to be revisited. Mazur demonstrated how confusing it is to interpret the intention behind some parts of the Act.
“What I would like to see is a piece of work starting now led out of the Ministry of Justice that involves a really good conversation across the whole of the sector to work out what we need this to look like for the next Parliament.”
The other big recent news was that work on the possible transfer of regulation of CILEX members from CILEx Regulation to the SRA has stopped.
Basically both Ms Coupland and her SRA counterpart Sarah Rapson – who took on their roles within a couple of months of each other – have too many other things on their plates.
“I’ve got a series of significant priorities for CILEX over the next five years, which are captured in our strategy. The amount of work that would be required to undertake [the move] would take us away from them.
“We still want to have that debate about the right regulatory landscape and we are still keen to pursue improvements in regulation.”
Having been at loggerheads over the SRA change, can she work with CILEx Regulation though? Ms Coupland pointed to how they collaborated in addressing Mazur – that signalled her approach.
The issues previously CILEX identified with the regulator still needed to be addressed, she said. “We’re just trying to tackle them in a different way.”
She is particularly passionate about CILEX’s contribution to the justice system, a body where women make up 77% of its membership, while 16% are from an ethnic minority background and 77% attended state schools.
“We really want to play a part in creating a legal system that is both equipped for the future, but also open to anyone who has the talent to succeed. It’s about really promoting diversity and inclusion within the legal system.
“We have a diverse membership. We don’t have a sufficiently diverse legal sector. When you put those things side by side, the legal sector should be flinging its doors open to CILEX members. We are part of the solution to this problem.
“Over the next five years, I’m confident that we will start to see more sort of practical steps rather than kind words on the topic of making the profession more diverse and inclusive.
“Large numbers of people in this country are losing faith with our traditional institutions. We’ve really got to listen to that. We’ve got to make sure that the public can see people like them administering justice.
“If we don’t, we’re not going to get ourselves out of this particularly difficult period that we’re in.”