The CILEx route offered by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives gives young people an alternative option to gain practical experience, vocational training and a different route into the legal profession. We spoke to Jenny Pelling, Director of Business and Apprenticeships at CILEx Law School, and Julia Szczepanski, Client Services Director at IntegraKM, and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, to find out more about CILEx.
What was your route into apprenticeships?
Jenny Pelling: After the law conversion I joined a City firm, called Rowe & Maw (now Mayer Brown), as a trainee solicitor. After a few years’ working in London, my interest in a career in education was piqued by an advert in The Times for a former lawyer to join CILEx Law School, which happened to be a 15 minute drive from home.
When I started at CILEx Law School, our students were essentially following an apprenticeship structure. “Earn as your learn” has long been the CILEx mantra. So, when a project was launched to create a new legal apprenticeship, I got involved. With three other partner organisations, we worked around our day jobs, to create a new government-funded way into law: the higher apprenticeship in legal services and then the Advanced Apprenticeship, which was the forerunner to the new Paralegal Apprenticeship.
Julia Szczepanski: When I was at school, business apprenticeships were much sought after and hard to secure. General Motors was the main apprenticeship employer in my area (Bedfordshire) and in order to secure one you had to get through interviews and an assessment centre. The prize was a three-year HND Business apprenticeship. I managed to shock my Grammar school by applying for and securing one.
After my A levels, I applied to work in a solicitor’s office in London where I was taken on as a legal assistant and enrolled by the firm on the Legal Executive training course.
I trained with ILEX (before it obtained ‘Chartered’ status) back in the ‘80s – full days in the office, then studying at night for 4 years and then 2 years post-qualification to obtain my fellowship standing.
When designing legal apprenticeships, how do you ensure that the content isn’t too ‘law firm centric’, so that students have the flexibility to choose from different sectors?
JP: Content is broadly drafted, so that the requirements of competence from the apprenticeship are as applicable to private practice as they are to in-house legal teams or the public sector. The only current exception to that is the requirement for apprentices to be able to draft client care letters, but that is an important part of legal practice and allows the apprenticeship to be transferrable from in-house to private practice as well as the other way around.
Communication skills sit within each of the legal apprenticeship requirements, as well as time management and there are a range of other skills which equip apprentices to succeed in any sector.
JS: Written accompanying qualifications should be technically precise and inclusive, but formal mentoring is needed too in order to put learning into context, and to align it with other functions and skill sets within the business.
Formal mentoring should also seek to ensure that ‘soft skills’ are developed that are transferable to other roles that the apprentice may be promoted to, or sectors that they may wish to transfer to in the future.
How will you combine soft skills with the core skills, and set what the apprentice will be asked to do in context of wider business objectives?
JP: The beauty of an apprenticeship is its work-place setting. Apprentices don’t learn in isolation or purely in academic institutions, but in the workplace, meaning they can apply their technical knowledge to business situations. As apprentices are very much engaged in the work of their employer, soft skills have to come into play. As a training provider, we coach and guide the apprentices about such soft skills. This is best done in conjunction with the employer, their supervisor and a mentor.
Will there be a guaranteed job at the end of the training period?
JP: The days of hiring volume apprentices, only to discard them at the end of their training, are rightly a thing of the past. Fortunately, this wasn’t a problem with the legal sector, but had been a criticism of apprenticeships in other sectors. The government has issued new guidance on employing apprentices, which states that there should be a genuine job at the end of the apprenticeship. Where that isn’t possible, the training provider’s role is to give information, advice and guidance to the apprentice to help them find employment elsewhere.
There are no guarantees, but the spirit of the apprenticeship is that the apprentice will be offered a role should there be one, assuming they have performed to the right standard.
JS: Training is a big investment for any firm. With any investment, there must be return on that investment. In order to calculate the long-term career prospects and ultimately the value of the apprentice to the firm it is only fair that the apprentice be included in this equation. The apprentice should be exposed to the calculation of ‘value ‘and how it relates to their contribution to the business. That will give them a better chance of remaining in a role once the training has ended.
Will the apprentice be paid a decent salary?
JP: Apprentices will receive at least a minimum wage in the first year of their apprenticeship. The rate is £3.50 per hour from April 2017. Once they have completed their first year they are entitled to the National Living Wage, which ranges from £4.05 to £7.50 as of April 2017. However, we find that employers in the legal sector are offering significantly better salaries than this, frequently starting above the National Living Wage. The range of salaries we see for legal apprentices is from £11,000 to £20,000 depending on location and level of apprenticeship.
Is the apprenticeship attractive because it gives the student the chance to get the experience that their college counterparts just can’t see to secure post graduation?
JS: Apprenticeships, in the right hands and executed well, offer a chance to earn, learn, and have access to experts who will help the apprentice to develop lifelong work and personal skills . But it has to be a two-way effort. When I was an apprentice, I had to work hard to get noticed, to win respect and get the best experts, within the firm, to believe that it wouldn’t be a waste of time to invest their time in me.
This understanding has to be part of the contract with the apprentice: they can’t approach it passively.
JP: It is absolutely the case that apprenticeships are attractive because they offer a job within the profession and that much needed experience. Julia’s point about a two-way effort is being addressed as a stipulation of apprenticeships: apprentices, their employer and CILEx Law School enter into a ‘commitment statement’ doing precisely that, with each party setting out what they commit to do during the apprenticeship.
How tailored are the apprenticeships programmes at this point? Can they react to how technology is changing the legal industry?
JS: Apprentices who are brought in to provide the much needed technological, business intelligence and data analytic skills will require expert mentoring. Trained well, the apprentice will drive his or her own need to stay current and will develop his or her own mentor network.
Remember, you are training a flexible and enquiring mindset – that should be an intrinsic part of the soft skill and career development training. A well taught and respected apprentice will become part of your alumni in time, ultimately becoming PR ambassadors for your firm whether or not they remain an employee. Building a successful brand is a key differentiator for the firm and that doesn’t stop once your employee leaves.
Is there a real appetite for vocational apprentices in the legal sector? Are legal executive numbers increasing, and are they being recognised and promoted?
JP: Some of our apprenticeship employers are now in the process of recruiting their third or fourth cohort of apprentices. Given the investment firms put into each and the increasing number being recruited each year, this shows that they find value in the programmes, both in terms of skills that are being brought to the business, as well as long-term sustainability.
Similarly, we are seeing a significant number of apprentices being promoted onto a progression path of further Chartered Legal Executive apprenticeships, as they successfully complete their first apprenticeship. We also have existing employees at legal organisations becoming apprentices from September 2017. The flexibility of the programmes means that staff at all levels can be developed, from entry level support staff all the way to law graduates. Ashtons Legal, for example, is sponsoring a current employee through a solicitor apprenticeship as part of their strategy of developing talent in-house. It’s also worth highlighting that a number of our apprenticeship employers are currently or have in the past sponsored staff through the CILEx route to qualification.
Last year, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) celebrated its highest number of graduates in its 53-year history, with 275 Graduates, Fellows and Advocates being recognised at its annual 2016 Graduation and Admission Ceremonies.
How do you overcome people’s preconceptions about apprenticeships?
JS: I attended a very academic grammar school, and was bright enough to go to university but for all the reasons mentioned further above, I knew I wanted to train on the job. That was how I felt more comfortable learning and it ensured that I could take exams and successfully apply both the academic research that I had to undertake, together with my practical knowledge, to passing my exams. But I agree, more needs to be done to present the apprenticeship route to work option in a more forward thinking and progressive light.
Is sufficient press attention given to the choice of industries in which apprenticeships are available, or is there a misconception that apprenticeships only apply to construction, engineering, the trades, and so on?
JS: A lot more can be done to raise the prestige and status of the apprenticeship within the legal sector and the public domain. The skills I learnt in my training (negotiation, communication, problem solving, research, client care, service delivery, analysis) enabled me to change careers three times without fear of failure.
I believe there should be more ‘poster men and women’ who should share their success stories from their chosen path of the apprenticeship as a route to work.
JP: There is much more focus this year on professional apprenticeships, so the perception of apprenticeships being purely a physical trade career are changing. Press coverage of legal apprenticeships is increasing too. There was considerable media attention, for example, on Bond Dickinson’s success at the National Apprenticeship Service finals in January 2017, at which they won the Newcomer Large Employer of the Year award. Legal apprenticeships were highlighted in National Apprenticeship Week in March this year at an event hosted by the BBC. Many of our legal apprentices are acting as the ‘poster men and women’ of apprenticeships. They are impressive advocates of, and ambassadors for, this new route into law and the organisations at which they work.
