Helping to turn a job into a career; an occupation into a profession
1. Introduction
The Institute's Competency Standards are a professional development tool that details in plain English the core skills and knowledge that the legal profession requires of a variety of staff at the different stages in their careers.
The Standards are not transaction checklists; nor are they aspirational best practice guidelines. Instead they reflect daily reality and document in detail the essential skills and knowledge that employers feel they should be able to expect of an experienced and competent member of staff. Therefore not only do the standards work as a competency benchmark, but they also give guidance to employers and employees about the skills and knowledge that staff need to be working towards acquiring at the different stages of their career.
The Standards allow both employers and employees to evaluate, accurately and in detail, an employee's skills and knowledge using an industry agreed, and nationally consistent,range of core competencies.
Until now, paralegals and many other legal support staff have suffered because the lack of nationally consistent standards have stopped the creation of a national career path; made formal staff appraisals very difficult; inhibited the development of structured training and made discussions with legal recruiters and training providers less detailed than they ought to be. The Standards assists both employers and employees with all these issues.
The Standards always contain the main professional conduct obligations expected of staff. All Standards are reviewed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority from a compliance perspective.
The Standards are primarily designed for people already in work. However training courses run by approved training providers or recruitment companies can also be used to obtain independent confirmation that someone meets a relevant set of standards. e.g. see Learning 4 Legals: click on the box below:
See below for the uses that the Standards are regularly being put to.
2. Cost
The Standards are free to download and use (see The Standards).
However you should subscribe to the relevant series of standards for a flat fee of GBP £70 per year, per series of standards if you wish to:
Automatically receive updates, amendments, corrections and notices
Obtain copies amended to allow you to mark individual standards as having been met and to allow a verifier to initial their confirmation of compliance
Have the opportunity to speak with us about implementation of the standards
For more information visit the subscribe page.
3. Contents
Standards' contents vary, depending upon the series in question. The following five series are currently available or being drafted:
Conveyancing paralegals
IT litigation support paralegals
Legal assistants
Legal secretaries
Paralegals
By way of example, the Paralegal Standards cover:
Advocacy
Application of Legal Expertise
Business Awareness
Client Relations
Communication
Interviewing and Advising
Managing Others
Negotiating
Practical Legal Research
Professional Conduct
Self Awareness and Development
Working with Others
Workload Management
Writing and Drafting
4. Uses to which Standards are commonly put
Providing a consistent benchmark of core skills and knowledge that employers require
Helping employers to define the changing job descriptions of many paralegal and support staff roles
Providing employers, employees, recruiters and training providers with a common 'language' to discuss skills needs
Assisting employers to provide more accurate employee appraisals
Assisting employees to better understand what is required of them and to help them identify their own strengths and weaknesses
To Attract, motivate and retain good staff by creating a basic career structure
To assist employers and training providers to offer more structured and consistent training/staff development
To give legal secretaries a nationally recognised legal qualification
To assist employers in the ongoing professionalisation of their non-lawyer staff
As an affordable alternative to expensive tailored standards
5. How the Standards work
Simply download the relevant Standards free-of-charge and begin using them in any way that you wish (mindful of copyright - see below).
6. Linked Qualification
Legal secretaries who manage to comply with at least 95% of the relevant level of Legal Secretarial Standards (there are three possible levels) can be awarded a legal qualification by a UK Government approved National Awarding Body.
The qualification is the LPQ [Introductory] [Intermediate] [Advanced] Certificate in Legal Secretarial Practice. The qualification costs just GBP £125+VAT.
To be eligible for an LPQ qualification, secretaries must first be registered as candidates and successfully complete an assignment undertaken at home.
For more information visit Qualifications.
7. Copyright etc
The Institute retains and reserves all rights of copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Standards.
Although you are generally free to use the standards as you wish, you are not entitled to:
Pass them off as your own work
To sell or otherwise commercially deal in them
To incorporate them into products or services that you sell
Use them internally or externally without attributing the Institute as the author and copyright owner
8. New Standards
We are always happy to speak with you if you have identified other areas of practice or non-lawyer legal professional groups that would benefit from standards being drafted. Please contact office@ theiop.org (Note break in link)
