More than 60 legal executives have been taken into partnership by their firms, ranging from large international practices to small niche high street and legal aid practices. This ability to appoint the best to the ownership and leadership of law firms has to be good news for individual and business clients.

It is this concept of enabling the best to succeed and make their contribution to the law that has driven the Institute of Legal Executives' (ILEX) long-term strategy. Our task is to secure sufficient lawyers and other qualified advisers and support staff to ensure every individual and business has access to excellent legal services.

So how are we doing this? First, it is important that the standard and quality of the professional qualification has national recognition. As an awarding body we are regulated by Ofqual. To meet its exacting standards, we recently redesigned the academic qualification in consultation with law firms, members, academics and others.

It has long been a source of irritation that the law constrained the opportunities that legal executives had to make a full contribution to firms and clients. The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, which extends eligibility for judicial appointment to legal executives, is a huge step forward, ensuring that those appointed as a judge in whatever capacity or jurisdiction truly are the best, and not merely the best of an arbitrarily limited pool of talent. Legal disciplinary practices and the development of alternative business structures will provide more opportunity for the 'best' to serve the public.

Legal executives will only be able to play their full part in the new legal landscape if they have the right to conduct reserved legal activities. ILEX has recently submitted applications to the lord chancellor that will enable suitably qualified legal executives to have independent rights to conduct litigation or to exercise rights to conduct probate.

We are aware of the importance of the non-lawyer to the delivery of legal services. We remain concerned at the number of individuals who receive little formal education or training, let alone a qualification relevant to their role in the legal office. With City & Guilds we offer vocational legal studies and legal secretaries qualifications to underpin our conviction that anyone who undertakes legal work should have relevant training or qualification and be subject to appropriate regulation. We also award bespoke qualifications for individual firms. Moreover, we have changed our membership structure to make it clear that we welcome members who are employed in the legal sector but who may not see the legal executive lawyer as their career goal. This makes it all the more urgent that we persuade the government to afford the title of 'legal executive' the same protection that solicitors, barristers and licensed conveyancers enjoy. They will all be subject to ILEX regulation, as are CPS associate prosecutor members who joined us last year.

Nor is it in anyone's interest for ILEX to 'go it alone' in these developments. The ILEX route to qualification as a solicitor is something that we and the Law Society are proud of. We need to work closely with both the Law Society and the SRA to ensure this route remains open. It is, after all, the only non-graduate route to qualification as a solicitor and, as such, contributes in a concrete way to increasing the diversity of the legal profession. The open access pathway into the law that ILEX provides was pretty well ignored in the recent Fair Access to the Professions report, and this omission reflected badly on the profession as a whole. The Law Society's dire warnings to law students and prospective law students about the difficulties of entering the solicitors profession underlines the wisdom of ILEX developing a graduate fast-track diploma as a route to becoming a legal executive lawyer.

Working together, celebrating excellence, encouraging choice, respecting difference and understanding that we do not all have to come out of the same box to do an equally good job is the sure way to achieve excellence in legal services.

Diane Burleigh is chief executive of the Institute of Legal Executives