Promoting ILEX

I feel so incensed by the letter I recently read from Angela Rowan that I feel I must respond (see [2003] Gazette, 30 May, 16).

I have been fighting for years - an apparently losing battle - to try to promote within the legal environment the quality of work and high level of academic standing that is held by a fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX).

I felt that I had failed in this quest, to the extent that I too am in the process of qualifying as a solicitor, as from this position maybe I will then be listened to by certain other solicitors.

However, it would be a nonsense for me to have to do a training contract, having worked full time for the past 22 years, 16 of which have been as a lawyer for a local authority.

During the past 16 years, I have had the power and ability to do all the things that a solicitor can do within local government.

I have also studied mainly in my own time for both my fellowship, my additional diplomas (equivalent to the CPE) and my legal practice course (LPC), a substantial part of which has been paid for by myself.

I would also point out that, certainly when I was qualifying as a fellow, you could not complete the fellowship without being in legal employment for the last two years of the examinations and then you had a further two years' legal employment before you could be declared as fit for fellowship by your employers.

When I complete my LPC, I shall be several thousand pounds lighter - and extremely tired - but maybe I can then chip away at the wider perception that fellows are no more than dogsbodies or paralegals.

Nicki Barraball, Shrewsbury