The Legal Executive

The register in numbers

More analysis

• A judge refused to hear a chartered legal executive who had the right to be heard
  On the best estimate this site can make, around 670 chartered legal executives do Court of Protection work. No CILEX authorisation mentions that court. When the regulator asked the court which of its authorisations applied, it waited five months to be told the answer was its own.
• Six chartered legal executives can appear in the higher courts
  Against 18,153 barristers with full rights of audience, the CILEX register holds six people with higher rights — the earliest granted in April 2025, four of them this year. The regulator is creating categories faster than the profession fills them.
• CILEX spent four years trying to hand its members to the SRA. Its own regulator called it unlawful
  Announced in 2022, formally signalled in 2024, abandoned in 2026. CILEx Regulation told its board the plan was unlawful and it was ready to litigate; the Legal Services Board convened peace talks to avoid 'costly legal action'; members demanded a vote and were told a vote would be improper.
• We called it a mirage. It was the biggest change to this profession in decades
  This site reported that 2026's ninefold rise in specialist practice rights was mostly re-labelling. It was not. 1,338 of those authorisations went to people who previously held nothing but the base qualification, and the cause is a judgment the regulator's own board papers describe as reshaping its year.
• Specialist practice rights did not grow ninefold in 2026
  CORRECTED. This article said the 2026 growth in specialist practice rights was a re-badging exercise. It was not. The growth was real, and its cause was the Mazur judgment.
• Three in ten legal executives do not exist online
  We searched all 11,603 people on the CILEX registers by name and employer. 3,761 of them return nothing at all — and the ones who are easy to find are the ones who need finding least.
• Insurance defence, not the high street
  The largest employers of chartered legal executives are claims and insurance firms. But 58% of employers have exactly one, and that long tail is most of the profession.
• The profession the Bar does not reach
  Wakefield has 70 chartered legal executives and one barrister. Southport has 50 and one. On the map, CILEX and the Bar are barely the same country.

Largest employers

All 3,097 employers →

What they work on

All 18 practice areas, and 742 area-and-town pages →

When they qualified

Every year from 1977 to 2026 → — the busiest is 2022, with 482 people still on the register.

Where they work

All 436 towns → · 108 postcode areas →

What people ask

Searching for 3,097 law firms by name returned the questions Google says people also ask. Grouped by subject:

• Which are the biggest law firms in a town?
  Raised against 641 firms
• What does a lawyer cost, and is the first meeting free?
  Raised against 540 firms
• Is a solicitor a lawyer?
  Raised against 337 firms
• How do you check that a lawyer is regulated?
  Raised against 178 firms
• What is a chartered legal executive?
  Raised against 8 firms
• Is a chartered legal executive a lawyer?
  Raised against 3 firms