Handing over the baton

CILEX president Caroline Jepson reflects on her term of office, what is on the horizon for CILEX, and the highs and lows of juggling work, the presidency and family life

As I head into my final month as CILEX president, and before I pass the baton onto Matthew Huggett, I wanted to use this opportunity to reflect on the last 11 months and what has been achieved by CILEX.

Whilst I’m not generally a fan of looking back, I do often find myself having a quick glance over my shoulder just to see the distance travelled to get to this point. One of my favourite sayings is ‘take pride in how far you’ve come and have faith in how far you can go’.

In recent months, CILEX has launched legal apprenticeships in Wales, in partnership with the Law Society and the Welsh Government, bringing more flexible legal services apprenticeships to Wales. We have also seen the CILEX Foundation scholarships and bursaries programme open to new applicants, giving more people from under-represented and socially disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to enter the legal profession.

In January, the first cohort of students sat the CILEX Professional Qualification (CPQ) assessments, with 61% passing the first stage. They are now well into their journeys of completing the Foundation stage and progressing to the next part of the CPQ with both legal knowledge and skills, and practice-based experience. They are also building their knowledge around legal technology, business skills and emotional intelligence – a first for legal training of this kind.

Achievements like these demonstrate CILEX’s leadership in the legal profession when it comes to opening up opportunities to non-university routes into the law.

Practice rights

In May, CILEx Regulation announced that the Legal Services Board had approved the new training and assessment route for Chartered Legal Executives to obtain practice rights. The new assessment route, which will run in addition to the existing portfolio route, is being offered by the University of Law.

“I would strongly encourage those with eligible qualifying employment to explore the assessment route, or training and assessment route, to gaining your practice rights” 

All Chartered Legal Executives with at least five years’ qualifying employment have the option to choose this route to obtain practice rights.

I would strongly encourage those with eligible qualifying employment to explore the assessment route, or training and assessment route, to gaining your practice rights. I know that all of those members who sat the pilot in 2021 were successful and that, having demonstrated their competence against the additional regulatory standards, they have been awarded the CILEX Lawyer status.

Insight survey

So that’s a look at what has been achieved in the last year, but what’s on the horizon? Just because I’ve only got a few weeks left in the presidency seat, that doesn’t mean that I have taken my foot off the gas! Quite the opposite.

This week we launched another member insight survey, which I do ask that you spend 20 minutes of your time completing. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to gain insight from member surveys, and just how important they are in helping CILEX to structure its future objectives, designed to help you and support your future careers. It sounds cliché, but please ‘help us to help you’ by completing the survey.

In the coming weeks I will be spending time with Matthew Huggett, who is waiting in the wings to be your next CILEX president. He and I have already worked closely together this past year but being a ‘T crosser, and i dotter’ I am keen to ensure that he has everything he needs to make his transition from vice-president as smooth as possible.

Highs and lows

I wanted to end by reflecting on the challenges, the highs and the lows of the presidency role.

There have been some sublime to the ridiculous moments that I won’t forget. There have been lots of late nights and early mornings juggling CILEX work, my own business/work and motherhood. There have been last-minute sprints up to school to collect my daughter (whilst having conference calls) in an afternoon. I’ve also become a dab hand at preparing endless amounts of meals and snacks for a hungry five-year-old whilst Zooming, and more recently I terrified our local shopkeeper by saying ‘sweet dreams’ instead of ‘goodnight’ when I popped in for some milk on my way home from a very long, tiring day in London.

All that aside, at the forefront of my mind is the honour of being president of CILEX. Like many of you reading this, I am a stick of rock when it comes to CILEX - cut me in half and I probably have CILEX written through my centre! That has made it an absolute privilege to have donned the presidential badge for the last 12 months and it is an experience I will take forward into my next ventures.