Barristers

The Legal Services Board has rejected a call from its consumer panel to consider a centralised regime of financial protection for clients to replace what the panel called the “fragmented” nature of insurance and compensation arrangements across the different legal regulators.

The Bar Standards Board effectively killed the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) today – six years after it was meant to come into force – by saying it was pulling out to go in a different direction to assure the quality of criminal advocates. QASA was originally meant to start in December 2011.

The lack of young barristers is now so acute that it could spell the end of a “sustainable, separate profession”, the incoming chairman of the Bar has warned. Andrew Walker QC said: “To put it bluntly, we are recruiting and retaining ever fewer new tenants, and have been for over a decade, and the Bar is steadily growing older.”

The standard of proof in disciplinary cases involving barristers is being lowered to the balance of probabilities following a decision yesterday by the Bar Standards Board. Meanwhile, a former Labour minister has been appointed as the next chair of the board.

A “steady stream of disagreements” between legal regulators and representative bodies means the rules governing their relationships may need to be rewritten, the Legal Services Board said yesterday. The oversight regulator said it had been notified of 30 disputes over the past three years.

The president of the Family Division has set aside 21 fraudulent divorce petitions produced by a disbarred barrister. Sir James Munby found that, in each case, the underlying proceedings were “tainted by deception”. The applications were made by the Queen’s Proctor – an official of the Crown able to intervene in divorce and probate cases.

The Bar Council has issued its first series of certificates to recognise efforts made to support the wellbeing of barristers, clerks and chambers’ staff. The move came as the Criminal Bar Association – itself one of the 31 chambers, inns and specialist Bar associations to receive a certificate – warned of a “crisis” in the wellbeing of its members.

While the Bar continues to increase in size, the junior Bar is shrinking, in part because of competition from solicitors, the profession’s leader has warned. Bar Council chairman Andrew Langdon QC highlighted wellbeing and diversity as two further challenges to a Bar that he said was otherwise changing with the times and following the market.

The Bar Standard Board has decided to introduce compulsory registration of youth court barristers, despite fierce opposition from the Bar Council. However, it shied away from demanding compulsory training, arguing that the market for youth advocacy was too “fragile” for additional regulation.

The cab-rank rule will not be extended to public and licensed access (PLA) cases after the Bar Standards Board received complete backing for the position in consultation. Feedback has also led it to drop plans for a requirement that PLA barristers disclose of the level of their professional indemnity insurance.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service has launched a new consultation on flexible operating hours pilots which accepts the possibility that extending the hours of courts, although desirable, might not be possible. It presented a range of options to be trialled, including double shifts and mixed Crown Court and magistrates’ court sittings.

A barrister currently serving a suspension for conducting litigation without authorisation has now received a hefty fine for failing to attend an Upper Tribunal hearing without good reason. He was fined £5,000 by a Bar disciplinary tribunal – a large sum by its standards, although a tenth of the maximum it can fine – for failing to act in the best interests of his client.

A barrister whose charity, regulated as a law firm by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), was dissolved at the end of last year due to funding problems, has set up both a conventional BSB firm and a pioneering university law project to help immigration detainees.

The Bar Council has strongly attacked a plan by the Bar Standards Board for the compulsory registration of youth court advocates, the first scheme of its type. It said the move did not address the “underlying issues of low pay and status” in the youth courts and risked deterring barristers from undertaking the work.

The Bar Council has closed its flagship nursery scheme at Smithfield in the City of London, citing a lack of places and promising to find other, “more effective” ways of supporting barristers with childcare responsibilities. The Bar Nursery – five years in the making – was launched to some fanfare in April 2013.