The voice of members

CILEX President Emma Davies looks at the role of the CILEX Professional Board and its new workplan, focused on supporting members to progress their careers, building the CILEX community, and championing diversity and social mobility in law

As I approach the home straight in my presidency, I want to use this opportunity to talk to you about CILEX’s Professional Board.

The Professional Board is the voice of the members and exists to ensure we are best reflecting the views and perspectives of our varied membership. It is made up of a diverse mix of CILEX members, with 12 in total, including Fellows, students and paralegals (currently co-opted pending any Charter change).

The board carefully scrutinises the papers put before it to consider the impacts on you, the members, and where necessary challenge the executive and main board. The president, vice-president and immediate past president also have seats on the main board, where we are again able to robustly challenge it on behalf of the membership.

We advocate for CILEX members, raising concerns experienced in different practice areas and at work. We are all passionate CILEX members who discharge our duties in addition to our day jobs.

And we’re growing.

At the time of writing, recruitment for Fellow vacancies is in full swing to ensure we have a full complement of Fellows and a steady pipeline of future presidents. Recruitment for substantive student and paralegal members is currently on hold, pending any charter change, but I very much hope that exercise won’t be far behind, to ensure we have representation from all grades of CILEX membership.

At our last board meeting in April, we approved the Professional Board workplan which, for the first time, sees the creation of seven portfolios to be held by professional board members. These are the areas of work we believe are the most important to the membership,

Employer engagement

The first is employer engagement; this is the cornerstone of our new organisational strategy to drive parity in the workplace. We want to further raise the profile of the CILEX qualification route within law firms and other providers.

“We will be advocating for CILEX members to be guaranteed equal career development opportunities to their solicitor counterparts” 

We will be advocating for CILEX members to be guaranteed equal career development opportunities to their solicitor counterparts and, once approved, will be promoting the benefits of the Chartered Paralegal title.

Member events 

We will also be focused on delivering the full portfolio of CILEX member events. This includes graduation, inauguration, roadshows across the country, the National Paralegal Awards and, hot off the press, the CILEX Annual Conference, a new flagship event for 2024 – watch this space for further details.

The Professional Board will ensure these events support the delivery of key objectives, including the promotion of practice rights and learner progression.

Career development 

We know our members are ambitious and CILEX wants to support your progression. The Professional Board will ensure we increase applicants for judicial roles and judicial development activities through the Pre-Application Judicial Education programme and the development of CILEX’s own Judicial Academy.

As with our employer engagement activity, we are keen to ensure all firms are providing internal development opportunities so that you can see how you might progress to partner or to a senior management role, as well as considering the exciting opportunities that exist within judicial appointments or other external roles now open to CILEX Fellows. 

We are also overseeing the plan to increase the uptake of practice rights routes among eligible Fellows, and ensure CPD and training meet the needs of members, facilitating compliance with regulatory requirements.

Policy development 

On policy, we monitor emerging trends in specific practice areas and oversee sector-wide campaigns to remove barriers for CILEX members. We also ensure appropriate professional board oversight of each specialist reference group and other groups where our members kindly represent CILEX.

Professional networking 

We want to build on our existing CILEX community, promoting independent local networks of CILEX members, overseeing development of online communities (e.g. by practice area and qualification stage) and developing partnerships with the Junior Lawyers Division and other multidisciplinary networks.

Equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI)

Ensuring the legal profession is inclusive and diverse and better represents our society, is central to CILEX’s mission. The Professional Board sets and monitors specific areas for the executive team to focus on, such as the gender pay gap, or differential attainment across ethnicities.

We also attend events and promote CILEX as a champion of diversity and social mobility in law and encourage members to participate in CILEX via the lens of EDI to ensure we are an inclusive organisation.

Career promotion

Finally, we are committed to promoting the CILEX career path to the wider public. That involves overseeing and monitoring all career promotion activity such as school, college and university presentations.

We also attend and represent CILEX at relevant student events and build relationships with existing networks, undertaking career promotion activity with groups such as Sikhs in Law and Women in Law Kent.

In addition to the work covered by these portfolios, Professional Board members sit on various other sub-committees, including audit & risk, finance, education, qualification, and sales & marketing. The three office-holders also pick up additional roles on the main board and those covering corporate communications, nominations, the chairs’ group (comprising the chairs of all committees), and scrutiny.

I’m sure I speak for the whole Professional Board when I say that, in addition to committee attendance, our favourite role is meeting members in person at CILEX events, and getting the opportunity to hear your stories, to celebrate with you and to feedback any comments, concerns or ideas you may have, including any feedback on our workplan and any gaps you feel exist. We invite you to get to know us, to connect with us on LinkedIn or to email us. As always, my inbox is open: emma.davies@cilex.org.uk.

As I move into the final stretch, before handing the baton over to my wonderful Vice-President Yanthé Richardson, I will continue to loudly advocate for all CILEX members and I look forward to meeting more of you at events throughout the year.