Force for change

CILEX chair Chris Bones and president Caroline Jepson give an update on the significant progress made with government on judicial eligibility, Crown prosecutor roles and powers of attorney, and call on members to help grow CILEX’s membership and influence

Happy new year to all of our members. In this edition of the Journal, we’ve chosen to write one joint piece, focusing in on three specific areas where we are starting to see results, in some cases after years of hard work.

Membership

Firstly, however, a brief update on membership. So far renewals for 2022 are progressing well, with over 48% of members already enrolled for the year. This is well ahead of last year and demonstrates the degree of membership engagement that was recorded in the member survey last year.

To continue to make the kind of progress we will go on to share below, we need every member to renew. We are also looking for as many of you as possible to help us grow our membership by recruiting at least one new member each. There’s an incentive, so do keep reading.

If you are struggling to pay your fee this year and cannot get your employer to do so, we can help you through the CILEX Foundation.

Making an impact

As many of you know, we have spent the last three years building an effective working relationship with the Ministry of Justice, the Judicial Office, the UK and Welsh governments, and the main UK opposition parties.

At the close of 2021, the government issued a statement of intent to the Judicial Appointments Commission announcing that it is considering changes in 2022 that are of major significance to CILEX.

The intention of these changes would be to:

These are three of our four ‘big asks’ of government that would create a genuine level playing field for CILEX Lawyers. This outcome is the result of a great deal of hard work by many people on your behalf.

“CILEX succeeded in getting its first written question tabled in Parliament through the support of Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North and shadow minister for courts and sentencing.” 

This progress was further confirmed when CILEX succeeded in getting its first written question tabled in Parliament through the support of Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North and shadow minister for courts and sentencing. Here is the extract from the question and ministerial answer:

Question to the Secretary of State for Justice: “What the status of his department's review into widening judicial eligibility criteria to permit CILEX Lawyers to apply for all judicial posts is as of 16 December 2021”

James Cartlidge (Con) (South Suffolk) responded:

“The Ministry of Justice's review of barriers to certain legal professionals, including CILEX lawyers applying to a wider range of judicial offices, is ongoing. In the Judicial Diversity Forum's (JDF) update to its plan and priorities for 2021/22, published on 20 December 2021, the MoJ committed to review, by July 2022, the process and barriers to appointment to Judicial Office for all parts of the legal profession to ensure we broaden the pool of talent by:

We have written to Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and Lord Chancellor, warmly commending this intention and offering our full support to enable these changes to come to fruition in the next 12 months.

Powers of attorney

On the other ‘big ask’, on certifying powers of attorney, the intention to move to digital powers of attorney will eventually remove the barrier our members face in the certification of copies of lasting powers of attorney (LPAs) and enduring powers of attorney (EPAs).

We have, however, held a formal meeting with the Solicitor General, Alex Chalke MP, to ask that the government is still considering whether to amend the 1971 Powers of Attorney Act, or adopt a more comprehensive solution as the Land Registry has done. This is because the digital signature will not cover the millions of paper-based LPAs/EPAs already in existence and the barrier to practice will continue to adversely impact consumers. The government has promised to consider our points carefully.

Criminal legal aid

Finally, the criminal legal aid review led by Sir Christopher Bellamy QC was also published at the end of 2021. As you’ll recall, Chris was appointed by the previous Lord Chancellor as a member of the expert panel for this review and was able to keep CILEX concerns in the mind of Sir Christopher as he considered his findings. As a result the report includes:

Judicial appointments

We also held a formal meeting at the end of 2021 with Lady Justice Simler, who leads on judicial diversity for the Judicial Office. We reviewed the progress we are jointly making on the appointment of CILEX members to judicial roles.

“We are committed to offering 50 places on our judicial development programme this year, increasing to 100 next year and creating a pipeline of diverse and effective CILEX judicial applicants.” 

In this edition you can read about the appointments of our first CILEX employment tribunal judges. There is a real expectation now that our members will come forward and start to fill vacancies across the range of appointments – including, we hope, at higher levels once the changes mentioned above are confirmed.

We are committed to offering 50 places on our judicial development programme this year, increasing to 100 next year and creating a pipeline of diverse and effective CILEX judicial applicants. This will contribute towards the creation of a judiciary that is genuinely representative of the society it serves.

Over the past two years, we have seen four members appointed as judges, including one as a full-time salaried judge. This brings the total number of CILEX judges to 19.

We know you share our ambition – but to get there you need to put yourself forward. There are subsidised places and plenty of support, including a session with Lady Justice Simler.

Our membership incentive challenge

Finally, with the introduction of CPQ and the continuing moves to remove the final barriers to a genuine level playing field, we are increasingly being seen as one of the driving forces in the future of legal services. We are also the one body now offering paralegals both a career path to becoming a fully qualified lawyer and a structure within which they can validate their standing as a paralegal or progress their skills by becoming an Advanced Paralegal.

This should make us the natural home for all the paralegals in your working environment, so this year we want to encourage as many of them as possible to join us. Up until now, joining has often been related to starting a qualification, but for current paralegals that isn’t necessarily what they are looking for. If each of our current members recruited one paralegal colleague to join CILEX, we would take our membership to nearly 40,000 and in so doing bolster our impact and influence.

We want to challenge you: recruit a new paralegal member and we will reward you with a credit up to £50 towards your career development. This can be used for any of our professional development products, including the judicial development programme, practice rights or advocacy top-up, as well as our career progression packages.

All you need to do is to sign in to your myCILEX account and follow the simple steps to generate a member invitation. Full details on how to take part will appear in your member newsletter on Thursday 27 January.

We’ve come so far – help us build our institute and create a thriving, ambitious and progressive force for change. With member growth and wider engagement, we can go so much further together.

 

 

Consumer focus When is evidence uncontroverted? Line of duty Ad | Brightlink Learning