Regulation

Young female barristers have been urged to stand firm in the profession despite a widespread prevalence of sexual harassment at the Bar, especially at the level of inappropriate comments.

The level of innovation in the legal market has “stagnated and fallen in some areas” in recent years, but there are a number of encouraging signs for the future, major new research has revealed.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has asked the country’s biggest law firms to explain how they prevent and respond to allegations of sexual harassment, it has emerged.

The Jewish solicitor fined for posting offensive messages on social media in response to alleged neo-Nazi trolls has accused the SRA of being “on the wrong side of history”.

There were around 125 barristers reporting fees of more than £1m last year, and another 200 who brought in more than £500,000, new figures from the Bar Council have suggested.

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.