Role of ILEX Professional Standards

Introduction

ILEX Professional Standards Limited (IPS) is the Legal Executives regulatory body and was created in October 2008 to ensure that ILEX complies with its responsibilities as an approved regulator of lawyers under the Legal Services Act 2007. Thus, IPS is to ILEX what the SRA is to the Law Society.

The work of IPS is directed by a Board of Directors, appointed in October 2008 to oversee the work of IPS. Board appointments run for an initial period of three years. The chair of the Board is Alan Kershaw, a specialist in professional regulation and who was formerly the first Chief Executive of the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners from 1999 to 2007.

IPS areas of activity

The IPS Board initially identified six main areas of activity:

• Education and standards;
• Registration and accreditation;
• Fitness to practise;
• Governance and process;
• Performance and risk; and
• Visibility and image.

IPS will regulate all 24,000 students, members and Fellows of ILEX and will provide authoritative guidance and rules of conduct, to help legal executives to meet the standards expected of them. IPS will, where necessary, investigate concerns about legal executives? standards of practice and their compliance with the rules, taking action if an individual?s fitness to practice is in doubt.

The protocols which set out the working relationships between The Institute of Legal Executives and ILEX Professional Standards Ltd can be found on the ILEX web site. It is essential that, under the provisions of the Legal Services Act, that as an approved regulator, ILEX ensures that “its regulatory functions are carried out independently, without being prejudiced by its representative functions; that its regulatory body is free to communicate with the Legal Services Board and other legal services stakeholders; and that resources are made available which are reasonably required to enable regulatory functions to be carried out.” The establishment of IPS ensures that this will be the case.

ILEX Code of Conduct

ILEX members are governed by a Code of Conduct which requires, inter alia, that they:

• Behave professionally
• Observe the same standards as solicitors
• Ensure clients receive the same support and quality of service as a solicitor provides.

Further details can be found at ILEX Code of Conduct elsewhere on this web site.

Where there has been a breach of the Code then it will be investigated in accordance with the ILEX complaint handling rules, further details of which can be found on the ILEX Complaints and Conduct page elsewhere on this site.

Those who enrol with ILEX must also observe the provisions contained in the Memorandum and Articles of Association. A copy of this can be found on the ILEX web site. This requires that those who enrol must:

• support the aims and objects of ILEX
• uphold the standards of professional practice prescribed in the Code of Conduct and Guides to Good Practice
• comply with all ILEX rules and bye laws.