CILEX CEO Interview: "I was in the job for 16 days before Mazur..."

After a baptism of fire when just 16 days into her new role as CEO of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) Jennifer Coupland was thrust into one of the biggest crises legal services has faced since the Legal Services Act with the Mazur ruling and subsequent appeal.

In a wide ranging discussion on the Today's Conveyancer Podcast, Coupland discusses how she handled the immediate aftermath of the decision, the appeal, and how she plans to shape the organisation going forward after plans to bring CILEX under SRA regulation were shelved.

She leads CILEX after a successful period running the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, transforming the perception of apprenticeships into a respected and sought-after career route. She sees strong parallels with CILEX’s model of “earning while learning,” which she believes is vital for improving diversity and accessibility in the legal profession.

Although CILEX was ultimately successful in its Mazur appeal, the ordeal was a "really, really tough 10 months for some of our members" says Coupland who adds the case exposed outdated aspects of the Legal Services Act 2007 and advocates for a sector-wide review to modernise legislation.

Through the course of the podcast she also highlights the need to improve consumer understanding of legal services, particularly awareness of specialist providers and the importance of quality, regulation, and affordability. Internally, Coupland has navigated challenges around potential regulatory alignment with bodies like the SRA, ultimately pausing plans but maintaining a commitment to reducing duplication and complexity.

Looking ahead, CILEX’s five-year strategy focuses on growth, education, influencing legal reform, and raising the organisation’s profile, with member engagement seen as crucial to its future direction. 

The Today's Conveyancer podcast can be found on your preferred podcast provider and also at www.todaysconveyancer.co.uk. Subscribe and listen in for all the latest conveyancing industry news and views. 

Thank you to our podcast sponsors LEAP Legal Software and InfoTrack

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Today's Conveyancer Podcast, the leading source of information for residential property lawyers in England and Wales. Don't forget to subscribe and sign up to our free newsletter at today'sconveyancer.co.uk. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, welcome along to the latest Today's Conveyancer podcast. I am delighted today to welcome onto the podcast Jennifer Coopland, the CEO of Silex. You've been in post now for what year, 18 months, Jennifer?

SPEAKER_02 0:40

It's actually only been 10 months.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

It's only been 10 months. That's just how much water has gone under the bridge in that time.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

I haven't reached my anniversary quite yet, but I've certainly packed a lot in, or at least it feels like that.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, uh, really appreciate you finding a window to join the podcast. Obviously, lots of opportunity today to talk about what's happened over the past ten months. I mean, you have absolutely packed it in, as you say, but also you're currently consulting on your forward plan as well. And an opportunity for you to kind of explore and explain a little bit about that as well in the context of the fact that the SRA who had planned in the context of plans that might have seen Silex merged into the SRA, or at least Silex Regulation merged into the SRA, and not come to fruition as well, of course. So interesting and exciting times ahead. In the first instance, and hopefully that frames the discussion, but in the first instance, tell us a little bit about yourself. You don't, for example, have a legal background, do you? So you come to this with very fresh eyes.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

I have indeed, Xavier. So my my journey into Silex has been sort of via the sort of education and training sector. So my background has been most recently in apprenticeships. So I was the CEO of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education for six years, and then I spent some time working at London South Bank University where I was pro-vice-chancellor of skills. So I've come into this legal world with an education and policy sort of background, you know, working with ministers and government and that that kind of thing. And it has really been you know completely fascinating adjustment, you know, thinking about what I thought it would be like and how it actually is, and where those differences are and where the similarities are with what I previously thought.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Well, I can't let you say that without going into some of the specifics. I mean, what have you kind of found that you perhaps weren't expecting?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Well, that's a tricky place to start. So I think I was I'll start with the things I was expecting. I was expecting it to be quite serious. I was expecting it to be a really important sector, you know, both for you know justice and for the economy. So all those things are absolutely true. I had thought that it would all move a bit more slowly than it does. So it has surprised me that actually when things need to happen in the legal sector, they really can. I think one of the things more culturally, though, that sort of surprised me is the sort of kind of nature of the debate, I think, in the legal world. I thought coming into this from a previous background, I was expecting a very sort of dignified and respectful sort of tenor to the debate where people would have, you know, quite respectfully delivered arguments and people would agree to disagree and all that kind of thing. Actually, it's much more brutal than that in certain places, and uh and it can be quite a tough environment, I think, as well. So that's been a bit of an eye-opener for me. That's certainly not what I was expecting.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

I look at our community of readers and listeners will be aware we have today's Inveyancer, today's Wars and Probate, today's family lawyer. They all have quite unique characteristics as well. And and I, you know, I I have a lot of sympathy for organizations like yourself who are really trying to coordinate and control and encourage these very disparate kind of uh communities to to come together and uh and to support access to justice. It's a it is an absolutely fascinating profession, isn't it? I was gonna say industry, but uh uh it's a profession really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:40

I absolutely agree with you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

It has been a whirlwind 10 months uh that we alluded to at the start. And of course the context behind that is that uh I mean, pretty much as you were appointed, the Missouri kind of decision was made initially, uh, and of course there was sort of all the appeal and fallout thereafter. We'll come on to that, but I I guess uh now you've been imposed for a a period of time. What are your thoughts on uh the place and role that Silex plays in in the legal community?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Well, I think probably I should first acknowledge that it has been a really, really tough 10 months for some of our members. The Silex community has definitely been in the spotlight through this, and and and many of them have really been put through the through the ringer since the the Mazda judgment, which did indeed happen 16 days into my tenure as CEO. 16 days. Day 16, yes, I'll never forget it. So I think the you know, the community, I think some are still feeling quite bruised by all of that. But the you know, the the really positive thing obviously is that you know we did take the case to the Court of Appeal and we did demonstrate that our interpretation of the law was on the conduct of litigation was was correct. So it was great to get that support. So people have been feeling very buoyed, I think, by that. I was reflecting the other evening on you know what the narrative would have been like had we not been successful in the Court of Appeal, and that would have just felt very, very different right now. So, you know, we've uh we've we've certainly found our found a place now where we are, you know, suddenly much better known uh as a result of all of this, which is obviously something as CEO of Silex that I will want to capitalise on. But historically, we've been around for 75 years, you know, we're a chartered body, we are a really important and serious part of the legal system in this country. I think we own a we're the third branch of the law, we are on a par with solicitors and barristers, and uh, and then we have our silex professionals as well. And you know, we need all of those pieces to be functioning really well and to be respected for what they do and and to be able to play the biggest part possible they can in achieving those big kind of you know objectives that we all have for the legal system around you know uh access to justice and uh and and doing things in the consumer's interest and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

One of the things you really major on is the diversity of your community as well. Is that a really important part of your mission?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Well, it's one of the reasons why I wanted the job. So, you know, I mentioned that I previously worked on apprenticeships. I think over the period that I was working on apprenticeships, I like to think that we did turn what was something that was not a hugely popular or popular route into something that is now really, really sought after, and people really want to do apprenticeships, and people are saying, well, I'm gonna, I won't go to university, I'm gonna go and do an apprenticeship instead. And we've really kind of grown the prestige of that. And I think Silex has got a load of those kinds of ingredients. You know, it's it's what what Silex is about, the Silex route enabling people to kind of train while they're working, so you're earning and learning at the same time, is is is uh is so important for the diversity of the of the legal system because it taps into a pipeline of people who may not otherwise have been able to access these great legal careers. And yeah, I think we're all agreed that we want a legal system that that better represents the people that it serves, and so we've got to find a way of growing these great roots so that more people can take them and we can build that diversity and that inclusivity in the legal sector.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Do you see then that Silex has got a role in upskilling the legal services sector?

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Well, I mean, we we do we we run our own law school. So Silex has its own law school run by the fantastic Judith Bourne, and we work really closely with thousands of employers up and down the country offering apprenticeships, qualifications, and bespoke training packages as well to sort of fit the needs of businesses today and trying to make sure that what we're doing means that we're offering really, really, really relevant training products that employers actually really want.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Let's move on to talk about Missure. 16 days in the job, Crikey. I didn't realise it was quite so soon after you were appointed. I mean, look, let's uh look ahead to start with, I suppose, if we're going to do this backwards. Do you see that there's any further fallout coming from the MSU ruling?

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I absolutely do think that there's further fallout from the Mazer ruling. I think that the whole case really sort of shone a light on this particular issue around the conduct of litigation. But what it's also done is there's a whole sort of set of consequential things that are now it's it's now been made more obvious that kind of existed previously, sitting around in different bits of rules or legislation that actually are quite anachronistic, they're quite illogical, you know, particularly given where the modern legal system is now and how we think the legal system should be operating in the future. So I think there's a lot of stuff in there that we should be looking at. So, for example, today I met with a group of Silex members who were talking about the need to modernise the language in the civil procedure rules, and you know, this is something we that that we'll be you know campaigning for, amongst other things, I think over the next five years of our of our strategy to try to bring all of this stuff up to date and to get it into a position where it actually works for the public and people can really understand what people are able to do and so forth. So I think it would be a real shame if the sort of Mazda judgment happens, you know, the Court of Appeal judgment happens, and then that's it, then we we you know we don't kind of think about what that means. I think it also showed up the need for a review of the Legal Services Act 2007. If you think about that, it became law in 2007, that's the same year the iPhone came out, and the iPhone's had 51 updates since then. So, you know, we haven't looked at this thing, and it's it is the underpinning of the whole of our legal legal services system. So it's ripe for review. And I think when you know, looking back in the history here of how we got to the Legal Services Act itself, I mean that took about five years. It was about five years in the making with the Clemente review and then uh you know consultations and white papers and what have you before the thing is you know makes its way through parliament. So I think we should be starting a conversation about this now across the legal sector, even though we, you know, we we don't have, we know we don't have parliamentary time this session to do something in this space because there are bigger, bigger priorities. But we could do the work now and we could have a an oven-ready bill for the next government, whatever they whatever uh strike they are post post the next election, I think. We really do need to do it, you know. I don't think we can go into the next election without having re-looked at some of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I mean, that there is a lot of criticism that the the LSA was only really ever a halfway house. It it was a mishmash of compromises and and you know, all sorts to start with. The fact that it governs, as you say, you know, our our entire legal system uh feels as though what you say it it definitely needs looking at.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

The other thing I think flowing from the from the uh the Mazda ruling, and I've sort of touched on it earlier, is that it has meant that Silex is much better known and there's a much broader understanding of what Silex professionals are doing in firms, you know. So I think that's got to be a positive because if you think about you know growing competition in the legal market, it's one of the regulatory objectives, isn't it? You know, increasing increasing competition. You know, we need to we need consumers to understand that they've got choices with who they want, you know, who they seek their legal services from. And and I think that you know the levels of you know knowledge out in sort of sort of the public domain about how all of this works is really, really pretty low. So trying to help people to understand that there are choices here, and you you know, you there are specialists, ILEX conveyancers, and you know, specialists in probate, you know, and so forth is all to the good, really.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, I I'm never completely sure. And you know, the legal services consumer panel often looks at this as well. How much consumers actually care about that? I mean it's certainly an issue that arises in uh in will writing, for example, where of course you've got uh the regulated solicitor sidex community and and you know a a large unregulated will writing community. But I you know, I I find very little empirical evidence that the consumers really to your point, one understand the difference, but two, whether there's a lot of evidence that they are that bothered by it. I mean, at the end of the day, they need something doing, and you know, does it matter who does it?

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah, so I mean I think the Consumers Panel was giving evidence to the Justice Select Committee a few weeks ago, and uh I think one of the things that he was saying was that actually consumers would quite often be much better off, you know, going to a specialist lawyer for their legal services, but they but they probably don't necessarily know that. So there's a big education job to do there. But you know, coming into the legal sector, I have been myself a consumer of legal services, and what you want is good quality, don't you? You want to be sure that you've gone to somebody who is properly regulated, who knows what they're doing, and that they can handle your issues appropriately and that you get a resolution at an affordable uh and at an affordable price, you know. So I think the the quality of legal services does, you know, really matter to the to the public. And you know, we we need to be able to explain that better, you know, collectively to people and to help people to make the best choices for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

It's fascinating to hear you say that you think that the speed of change has been quite quick. I dare dare I refer you to Property Act 1925, the Wills Act 1837 is primary legislation.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

I know, Javier. I mean, yes, yeah. Well, let me just put one caveat to that. When I was saying that what surprised me in terms of the ability of the legal system to move at pace was how quickly we managed to get our appeal through, you know, because that was a matter of public interest. And because we were able to demonstrate that there were real world challenges happening in courts, you know, in local authorities, in law centres networks, you know, we we were able to demonstrate that the courts did really move very quickly, you know, they expedited that appeal. So they can, you know, that can happen. But then, of course, as you say, we have things that have been sitting on the statute book since you know, you know, time immemorial, which you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

I'd love to see things like cohabitation looked at, but you know, the the challenge, uh and I I sort of alluded to it at the start, the challenge is that each of these areas of law have got so many things that need to change. I mean, you know, we we're awaiting a government output on home buying and selling consultation. We are awaiting a cohabitation consultation that was due in the spring. It's the uh the start of June. I don't know when your spring finishes. And I also want to sort of applaud Silex and Silex Regulation for the speed at which you've managed to uh get your members uh trained and uh certified, if that's the best word for it, on the litigation element that uh reserve obviously raised. Thank you. Because I I know, for example, I mean we we published recently uh an article from you that you know over a thousand people have now gone through that process in a very, very short space of time.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yes, that's right. Um I do I do need to kind of draw a line between Silex as the professional body that I'm CEO for and Silex Regulation, where my colleague Don Barwick is is CEO because it's Silex Regulation that have run that practice rights process and award practice rights. So we don't we don't do that. We've we've tried to work closely with CRL to try to enable that process to happen more swiftly and with you know fewer pain points for people. Um but yeah, you know, we've come out of this with over a thousand people now having got litigation practice rights so that they are fully authorised and they can delegate work to unauthorised staff and can supervise those people as well. So it's giving people those credentials for things that they've probably you know hugely capable of doing and and and in many respects have been doing previously in their professional lives. So yeah, so it it's good that we've got here, but it has been pretty pretty bumpy on the way.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Sure. If a judgment that you know ultimately spelled real disaster for the organization was not one existential crisis, a second was also on the horizon with the potential merger, as we said, between the SRA and CRL. That was sort of seems to have been put on the back burner. The the um latest consultation from the SRA sort of says no, that's not going to happen. I guess look, uh you know, is that a can that's been kicked down the road? Is that the end of that conversation for now, forever? What's your sort of take on that situation?

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, so I mean, as you've had mentioned, Silex and the SRI have been in quite advanced discussions about re-delegation and de-delegation of Silex's regulatory responsibilities. But you know, with Sarah Rhapsan joining the SRA coming in as the new chief executive, me coming into Silex as the new chief executive, you know, we're both looking at you know, what do we need? You know, what are the priorities for our organisations? What do we need to do now to get our organisations on a you know a much better footing? Sarah's got you know huge, huge challenges at the SRA. And you know, I think we both came to the conclusion that to make that change at this particular point in time, given the environment within which we were going to have to do that, was just going to take our organizations away from the sort of the key priorities that we have for our individual organisations. But you know, we absolutely remain committed to to having our members regulated in an effective way, in a proportionate way, you know, to have uh a regulator that is responsive to their needs and assist and working in a system where you know we we can design out any kind of unnecessary duplication and to have a system that is much more value for money. So we are still looking to dreamline regulation going forward. That certainly continues to be our ambition. So it's it's not a case of that we're we're just closing down the conversation about you know what does good regulation look like in this space. You know, 70% of Silex members work in SRA regulated firms, you know, they're subject to to two lots of regulation. You know, coming to this world fresh, there's got to be a better way of doing this, right? You know, so I think we do want to kind of continue to to explore that.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yeah, I you probably answered my my next sort of question then. So you see that there's scope for collaboration between the two organizations.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

So you mean between Silex and and the SRA? I think there's there's a need for much greater collaboration across the whole of the legal services sector. I think one of the things you know that that the MASA case showed up is that professional bodies and their relevant regulators have not uh collaborated effectively hitherto, and we've had different bits of guidance on different topics, and people have been completely confused. So I do think that there's a lot more scope for more collaboration. I think the legal services board agree with me on that one as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Let's move on to the third part of the discussion. You'll be pleased to hear that we're nearing the end of the time that we have together. But as we said at the start, you're currently consulting on future plans for Sciilex. We've obviously just been discussing the fact that uh you you know there is going to be a a future for Sciilex. What are your key priorities over the course of the next 12 18 months, five years, three, five years?

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yeah, so I mean I think this is a really exciting time now for Sciilex because we've been doing a a lot of work informally with our members and with external state. Stakeholders, our own board and our staff as well to kind of get everybody's views feeding into that, you know, what do we need to be doing and what do we want to achieve over the next sort of five-year, five-year term? And we've got sort of four you know big strategic goals that we're that we're sort of talking about. The first is around building that really proud professional community, and we've already got so much in that space, but thinking about you know, from our members' perspective, you know, why do you want to be a Silex member? You know, why do you want Silex to be your professional body? What are you getting out of that? You know, what's what's the sort of offer offer for members? And how do we help the wider public kind of understand what Silex is all about and what that what that route means? So that's the you know the first part of the our thinking is about that professional community. The second kind of big objective is around providing an excellent education for a growing profession. So there's there's two big bits in there, you know, there's the whole kind of piece around what is the training and qualifications offer that we need to have for Silex professionals going forward, particularly now as things are changing so rapidly with AI. You know, how do we future proof that? How do we make sure that people are being trained with the skills that employers need their people to have for the future? But the the the other part is that is that thing about growing. You know, I'm really ambitious for Silex. I think we've got a really bright future, and I think you know, thinking about the diversity piece in particular, you know, we could make such a big difference to legal services, but we're currently only 17 and a half thousand members. You know, we each of those individuals is an agent for change in the legal services world, but we need more of them, and so working out how we can kind of really grow that grow that profession and really make it into something where it can realise its ambitions, you know, the you know, realize its potential. So that's really important to me. And then the sort of third leg of the stool really is about driving change, so it's that sort of policy-facing stuff, it's the you know, what things do we think need reform in the system and and and making the case for that. I have a you know, as you know, a sort of policy background. So I'm used to kind of working with ministers and government and key opinion formers and so forth. So using that to sort of make a uh a case for change where we think that's important and elevating our profile, you know, just getting us much better known so people understand who we are. And you know, you're you're not the only Silex person in the firm and having to explain what it is every time anyone sees your credentials. So that's really, really important to me.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

You mentioned uh AI in there, and you know, I mean, there's a huge amount of kind of stuff that's happening around that. Interesting to hear you say that you know, you really feel as though uh practitioners need a lot of support and guidance around that. I I think one of the things I see from organisations like yourself, from the SRA, from the Law Society, Bar Standers Board, whoever it might be, is there is a a a real drive to share guidance and share information. And I'm sure it's hugely appreciated by practitioners, but um I'm not always completely convinced that there's a coordinated effort around it. That you know, for example, I I know the Bar Standers Board have just put out uh an AI guidance document. You know, how much of that could be repurposed for Silex lawyers for the sake of argument, so that we have a more joined up, coming back to your point about collaboration, that we have a more joined up approach amongst the regulators and the membership bodies towards some of these really critical issues that impact practitioners who, as you say, you know, Silex lawyers in SRA regulated practices, CLC lawyers in SRA practice regulated practices, Silex in the CLC, you know, that sort of dynamic.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Yeah, I I think it's a really good point. And I think it goes back to my you know, my call really for a real kind of cross-sector collaboration about some of the big issues that we we need to tackle here. So, you know, between now and the next next election, if we're working on you know, Legal Services Act 2.0, we we are going to have to have something in in there, aren't we, about AI and what what it means to operate in an AI-driven environment. I think we've we have got lots of very, you know, some great, really well-intentioned stuff going on at the moment, but it does feel like everyone's doing it in their little silo. They're all having their own little thoughts about it. And actually, I think there's a a trick being missed in terms of that coordination across the sector altogether to try to move forward and think about you know, what does this mean for you know, big city law firms doing kind of international MA versus high street firm doing conveyancing, you know, what does it what does it mean, and how do you make sure that you're the right side of the line with ethics and you're thinking about you know the fact that there's always going to be a person behind that AI. You know, you're the the AI is not the lawyer, you know. There has to be a person behind that in the same way that you know you need to be clear through with the all of the stuff we've been talking about about MATLAB, about who is responsible, who is on the hook for the advice that's being given here. And it isn't the AI tool, it's the person who's using the AI tool and is instructing it, you know. So we've got to work our way around all of that. And I think doing that as a collective and trying to get a bit more of alignment would be a very, very wise thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I just on a personal level, I think a more joined up approach to a lot of this stuff would would ultimately help your regulated communities. And and you know, I often think about the lawyer who comes into work in the morning, you know, sits down at their desk at half past seven, eight o'clock in the morning, doesn't leave until five, six o'clock in the evening, and and they've got a day job to do, you know, they're there doing their their their legal work and so much of this stuff happens on the periphery of that. And as I say, I just wish that the lawyer would sometimes be kind of the the real focus of some of that, uh, some of that attention rather than kind of the you know the guidance for the sake of guidance for the sake.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I mean from from our perspective as as the professional body for Silex members, you know, we we want to enable people to really embrace this you know new technology and to be confident using it and to be able to do it, you know, to stay the right side of the law with what they're doing and and and use it in a way that enhances their services to their clients, right? Makes their life easier. My colleagues in CRL are the regulator, you know, they will produce guidance on what is appropriate to do and what isn't appropriate to do in this circumstance. So I see that as a complementary piece. But you're absolutely right for a lawyer sit, you know, let's say it's a Silex, you know, property lawyer sitting in an SRA-regulated firm, where are they looking? You know, to the you know, that you we kind of need to make it centric, don't we, for them? So that it's easy for them to do the right thing in this space, as easy as possible.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

We could keep talking for much of the rest of the day, but it's as much as we have time for on the podcast today, Jennifer. I know that you're very keen for the community to engage with the consultation, aren't you?

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Absolutely. So we have written a very, I think, engaging consultation document that sort of sets out those big strategic goals I was talking about, but also some stuff about, you know, well, what does that actually mean and what will you do underneath each of those big strategic goals? So, for example, part of that building that proud professional community, we've got some thoughts in there around what we need to do next with the sort of titles that people use in in practice and aligning those titles better with the regulatory titles so that everybody can be much clearer about what people are doing. So there's some meaty things in there that we really want to get people's views on. The consultation closes on the 17th of June, so there's only a couple more weeks left to go. So please head to the Silex website, look it up, and take a few minutes just to give us your thoughts because we really want to hear what people think about it.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah, one of my biggest frustrations is that people complain about something that might or might not happen. Uh, but when they're given an opportunity to have their say, they don't you know, they don't, and and therefore it makes it very difficult to sort of uh have a comeback on that, isn't it, doesn't it? It's been fantastic to have you on the podcast, Jennifer. I really, really appreciate you joining and being part of the discussion today.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Thank you. It's been really nice talking to you, David.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

The Today's Conveyancer podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider. It's also available on today'sconveyancer.co.uk. My thanks to Jennifer, and thank you as ever for listening and we'll see you again soon.