Barristers

There will be fewer and more specialist barristers in the future, Lord Sumption has predicted, as he criticised some of the Bar’s actions in response to legal aid cuts.

A Labour government will reform barristers’ training by putting it back in the hands of the Inns of Court and ending the “profiteering” by commercial providers, Baroness Chakrabarti has said.

A “significant number” of barristers are still unaware that a new scheme for CPD has been in force for nearly two years or are unclear on how it works, Bar Standards Board checks have found.

The Bar Standards Board now has the power to intervene in individual barristers’ practices among a host of other new regulatory tools that have been approved by Parliament.

A barrister has been reprimanded and fined for his drunken behaviour at a Bar Mess event, where he engaged in “excessively physical and unwanted contact” with a pupil.

The chairman of the Bar Council has sent a strong message to solicitors about the need to challenge clients who discriminate against barristers because of gender, race or other bias.

The only female Afghan-born practising barrister revealed yesterday that she had been asked by a solicitor to return her brief because the client wanted “a white male barrister”.

The former national head of family law at Simpson Millar has set up his own firm and chosen to be regulated by the Bar Standards Board, which he described as a “good fit” for his business.

New rules which clearly limit the influence the Law Society can have on the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the Bar Council on the Bar Standards Board, have been published.

Increased use of technology at the Bar and in the court system has left barristers as vulnerable to cyber-attacks as solicitors, the Bar Standards Board has warned.