CILEX Practitioner Register Scraper

Scrape the CILEX Authorised Practitioners Directory — CILEx Regulation's official public register of Chartered Legal Executives (Fellows) and CILEX Practitioners authorised to carry out reserved legal activities in England & Wales. Search by practitioner name, employer/firm name, postcode, city/town, and/or practising right/title. No login, no cookies, no paid proxy.

CILEx Regulation is the independent regulator for members of CILEX (the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives) who are authorised to provide legal services. This directory is the same authoritative source consumers and employers use to check someone's credentials before instructing them.

What this actor does

• Combinable search filters: practitioner name, employer/firm name, postcode, employer city/town, and/or a specific practising right/title — mix and match, same as the official directory's own search form
• 34 practising rights/titles available as a dropdown: Chartered Legal Executive (and its litigation/advocacy/conveyancing/immigration/probate specialisms), CILEX Practitioner variants, Associate Prosecutor, and more
• Employer detail: name, full address (with city/postcode broken out), and whether the employer is itself a CILEx Regulation-authorised entity
• Practising rights history: every practising right held, each with its authorisation date
• Disciplinary-record flag: whether a practitioner has a published disciplinary finding on file, per CILEx Regulation's Publication Policy
• Empty fields are always omitted — you never see null, "", or []

Output fields

Field	Description
id	CILEx Regulation's internal contact identifier (GUID)
name	Full name, including salutation if published (e.g. Mr Craig Arrowsmith)
title	Salutation only, when recognisable (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr)
employerName	Current employer / firm name
employerAddress	Full employer address as a single string
employerAddressLines[]	Employer address broken into its individual lines
employerCity	Employer's town/city
employerPostcode	Employer's postcode
employerAuthorised	true if the employer is itself an entity authorised and regulated by CILEx Regulation
practicingRights[]	Every practising right held: { title, authorisationDate }
practicingRightTitles[]	Just the title strings, for quick filtering/display
hasDisciplinaryRecord	true if a disciplinary finding is published against this practitioner
sourceUrl	The directory search-results URL this record was scraped from. This is an encrypted, single-use link generated for that specific run — it may no longer resolve if revisited later. Re-run the same search filters on the directory's own site (or this actor) to get a fresh, working link.
recordType	Always practitioner
scrapedAt	UTC ISO timestamp of when the record was scraped

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
contactName	string	Smith	Full or partial practitioner name (case-insensitive substring match)
firmName	string	–	Full or partial employer/firm name
postcode	string	–	Employer postcode or partial postcode (substring match, e.g. M2)
addressCity	string	–	Employer city/town or partial city/town (substring match, e.g. Manchester)
practicingRight	select	–	Restrict to one of the 34 known practising rights/titles
disciplinaryOnly	boolean	false	Only emit practitioners with a published disciplinary finding
employerAuthorisedOnly	boolean	false	Only emit practitioners whose employer is itself CILEx-authorised
nameContains	string	–	Extra client-side substring filter on name
maxItems	integer	30	Hard cap on emitted records (1–300)

At least one of contactName, firmName, postcode, addressCity, or practicingRight must be provided — this mirrors the official directory, which requires at least one search term.

Example: search by surname

{
  "contactName": "Smith",
  "maxItems": 30
}

Example: search by employer + practising right

{
  "firmName": "Brabners",
  "practicingRight": "ce1cd209-6372-e911-a988-00224800c719",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: browse practitioners near a postcode, disciplinary records only

{
  "postcode": "M2",
  "disciplinaryOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: browse all practitioners in a city

{
  "addressCity": "Manchester",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Use cases

• KYC / due diligence — verify a legal executive holds a current, genuine CILEX practising right before instructing or onboarding them
• Compliance monitoring — check for published disciplinary findings against a named individual
• Recruitment — find practitioners with a specific specialism (conveyancing, probate, immigration, litigation) in a given area
• Market research — map which firms employ CILEX-authorised practitioners in a region

FAQ

Where does this data come from? CILEx Regulation's public Authorised Practitioners Directory, the independent regulator's own register of Chartered Legal Executives and CILEX Practitioners.

Why do I need to provide a search term? The directory holds a very large number of records; searching with no criteria at all isn't supported by the source system itself. Providing at least a partial name, firm name, or postcode keeps searches fast and reliable — exactly as the source's own search form requires.

Very broad single-letter searches are slow or fail — why? A one- or two-character name/firm search can match thousands of records, and the source's own results page can take a long time to render (or time out) for such broad queries — this reflects the live site's own behaviour, not a limitation of the actor. Use a fuller name, firm name, or postcode for reliable results.

Not every practitioner has disciplinary or employer-authorisation data — why are those fields sometimes missing? Those fields are only included when the source page actually publishes them for that practitioner; this actor never fills them with placeholder values.

Is there a limit on how many results I can get? Yes — maxItems caps the run at up to 300 records per search. Narrow your search terms (add a firm name or postcode alongside the name) to get a more targeted, faster result set.

Can I open the sourceUrl link later to double-check a record? The link works right after the run, but the directory issues it as an encrypted, single-use link tied to that specific search — it can stop resolving if you revisit it much later. To re-verify a practitioner, re-run the same search (by name, firm, postcode, or city) rather than bookmarking sourceUrl long-term.

Why isn't there a "membership number" or "area of law" search field? The directory's search backend is shared across several CILEx Regulation registers (practitioners, ABS firms, accountancy firms), and its front-end explicitly disables Membership Number, Area of Law, Authorised Areas of Practice, Name of Lawyer, and ABS firm filters for the Practitioner directory specifically — they exist in the shared code for other CILEx registers, not this one. We could not confirm these fields are populated for practitioner records, so they're left out rather than shipping an unverified filter.