Barristers

The number of barristers disbarred has more than doubled, the Bar Standards Board has said, with most of the cases relating to criminal convictions. The BSB warned also that the number of complaints involving use of social media by barristers was increasing.

Lord Justice Jackson has today put forward his vision for extending fixed recoverable costs (FRC), but warned that it was not his job to protect the junior Bar or any other part of the profession in doing so. Having initially talked about introducing FRCs for all cases worth up to £250,000, Sir Rupert said today that he has not gone that far because of improvements made in costs management.

The panel of a Bar disciplinary tribunal has taken the highly unusual step of recusing itself after an allegation that it had shown actual or apparent bias against the defendant barrister, Legal Futures can reveal. The decision is the latest twist in a long-running saga involving a barrister who has twice been cleared of other allegations in the past three years.

A barrister who made failed to disclose that he had previously run a law firm shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority before he applied to be called to the Bar, has been disbarred. Meanwhile, the SDT has struck off a former partner at London firm Hamlins for forging and backdating six letters.

The Bar Standards Board is considering the impact of the HM Courts and Tribunal Service’s proposals for longer sitting hours on the diversity of the profession, the only legal regulator so far to take a step, however tentative, into an issue that has generated bitter opposition from the profession.

There is a “clear perception” among most family law clients that barristers are more expensive than solicitors and other legal services providers, major research commissioned by the Bar Standards Board has found. Only 13% of those surveyed used a barrister at all, and just 12% of these contacted the barrister directly.

A man who posed as a barrister to con his victims out of thousands of pounds has been jailed for two years. Leonard Ogilvy, 51, of south London was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of three counts of wilfully pretending to be a barrister and three counts of fraud by false representation.

The Legal Services Board has given the frontline regulators largely positive reviews of their performance, but warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority that it will be monitoring the impact of its controversial decision to end public and press access to board meetings

A barrister who continued to offer immigration law advice after being disbarred has been jailed and branded a “charlatan” by the sentencing judge for taking advantage of “vulnerable and often desperate people”.

Barristers who are cleared of misconduct by a disciplinary tribunal can still be sanctioned for breaching the BSB Handbook, under new changes to the rules approved by the Legal Services Board. The Bar Standards Board said the changes aimed to fill a “gap” in its disciplinary powers.

Legal regulators have responded cautiously to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on price transparency, pledging to pilot regulatory requirements and test their effects on the lawyers and firms they regulate. They promised to implement controversial measures to encourage lawyers to publish prices if possible.

The Bar Standards Board has argued against extending the cab-rank rule to direct access work, on the grounds that access to justice would not improve, it might discourage them from taking instructions from the public, and may lead to clients invoking the rule inappropriately.

Law firm compliance officers and money laundering reporting officers have been scrambling to get to grips with the biggest shake-up in anti-money laundering rules in a decade, with the final regulations – which were only published on Thursday – coming into force today.

Bar students are struggling to understand ethical values because of the “massive memory test” awaiting them in the examination room, a senior lecturer has claimed. William Ralston, a former barrister, also questioned why anti-money laundering does not feature in the Bar professional training course exam.

Supreme Court judges should question the make-up of all-male teams of barristers appearing before the highest court in the land as their prevalence is damaging diversity in the profession, researchers have argued. The work highlighted the existence of homophily at the Supreme Court – the tendency of people to associate and bond with their own gender.