What is a solicitors clerk?

Sorry, should have said CILEX (Chartered Legal Executive) rather than FILEX (Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives).

Without reading into your case, sometimes the best advice will be to look to the court to resolve issues.

In financial matters it is expected to make offers and counter offers but only if both parties are reasonable. If you make an offer then make a lower offer, you are bidding against yourself which indicates that your first offer was unreasonable or you are desperate.

When ''negotiations'' drift on, it can be a false economy to continue spending money on communications that have no effect. In those situations issuing proceedings can kick start the process and either promote negotiations or move you towards a time when a judge can make the decision independently of the parties. You cannot force people to the negotiating table after all..

Charles

.Charles wrote:

A associate is a solicitor.

From top down:

Partner (solicitor/FILEX)
Associate solicitor/FILEX
Assistant solicitor/FILEX
Trainee solicitor
Paralegal/Solicitor''s clerk
Secretary
Receptionist
Typist
Office cat/junior

A title is a reasonable indicator but not a hard and fast rule.

An assistant solicitor who has been working for 30 years will out qualify a solicitor who qualified yesterday and set up a business with his mate who has been qualified for 1 year.

They will both be partners of the new firm but will not be able to find their own ahse with both hands.

Charles

So a solicitors clerk is below that of a trainee solicitor? Is this always the case? What if the solicitors clerk has many years experience?

It''s not always the case but I had to put the title somewhere!

The difficulty is that solicitors firms have to be very careful how they describe non-solicitors otherwise they fall foul of the SRA rules.

A trainee solicitor could be a person who has just started their two year contract and knows very little but if they are nearing the end of the period, they will know infinitely more than they did 23 months ago.

Also, the categories overlap and can be adjusted depending upon what section people have been working on. For instance, I know of experienced secretaries who could draft a divorce petition yet I know of partners who would not know what grounds of divorce are.

Years doing the job is the best indicator although even this is not infallible.

Charles

We agreed at mediation, Consent Order was drawn up and now stbx has asked for it changing twice to give me less, is this bidding against yourself?

If you have a binding agreement you can apply to the court for an order in those terms.

However, if the agreement was made at mediation, this will be a without prejudice basis therefore which means there is no agreement. Unless there is an offer and an open acceptance, you are still without an agreement.

If you don''t agree you can go to court - you can''t make someone agree to settle unless you accede to their demands.

Charles

Thank you Charles.
This is all so confusing, we agreed at mediation and consent order was drawn up and now stbx has changed his mind. How do we get to the point of there being an offer?

Sorry but this is way over my head now,

The mediation is conducted on a ''without prejudice'' basis. This means that you are not bound by what you said in the mediation.

A consent order was prepared after the mediation but unless your spouse signs this, there is no agreement.

The situation would be different if your spouse made you an open offer which you then accepted (or vice versa) but then refused to sign the subsequent consent order. In those circumstances you could apply to the court to say "there is a concluded contract here. There was an offer and an acceptance and the court is requested to formalise the order despite even though the other side is not willing to proceed".

Charles