Chartered legal executives gain full practice rights, including to form own firms

Chartered legal executives will be able to set up their own firms in 2015 after legislation passed successfully through the House of Lords.

An order was passed through parliament to enable ILEX Professional Standards (IPS) to intervene in firms to set up a compensation fund - a move which IPS says will also give firms a choice of regulator and consumers greater choice in legal services. As Legal Futures reports, it is believed that new specialist firms formed as a result of this development will attract new clientele from smaller businesses which were previously put off from seeking legal services by the fees charged.

Alan Kershaw, chair of IPS, said: “For many new and existing firms, this presents a great opportunity. For the first time they have a real choice of regulator. We should be clear about what that choice means. It does not mean a decline in standards, or a chance to escape scrutiny - it means a regulatory model that is best for your business, giving consumers the protection they need when seeking legal services.

"It also means that, for the first time, students starting out on the CILEx route can know that their natural end point is, if they want it, to be authorised to provide reserved legal services in one or more branches of the law either as an employed lawyer, or in running their own practice."