Barristers

The High Court has thrown out two appeals against Bar disciplinary tribunal decisions by “named and shamed” barrister Tariq Rehman. It has also refused permission for him to proceed with two judicial reviews and had no truck with the arguments he put forward.

Law Society spending on non-regulatory ‘permitted purposes’, such as law reform and practice support, surged by £6.3m in the four years between 2010 and 2014, research by the Legal Services Board has revealed. The research was part of the LSB’s investigation into the cost of legal services regulation.

Large numbers of barristers’ chambers are flouting an obligation to publish diversity data and the Bar Standards Board has been “unsophisticated” in its implementation of Legal Services Board diversity rules, a significant study has concluded.

Chambers carrying out immigration work have voiced a “unanimous and strong opinion” that they “repeatedly experience poor standards of service from solicitors”, a Bar Standards Board report has found. Complaints included “delays and outright failure” to pay barristers.

Barristers have complained that the decision of their regulator to make public the risk of commercial pressures damaging the Bar could on its own have a negative impact on the profession’s reputation. There are also reports of “growing anxiety” among young barrister about chambers being run as corporate organisations.

One of the newest barrister entities has said that using its services will be “like going to a solicitor’s firm, but a better kind of solicitor”. In a separate development, two barristers have set up a BSB-regulated firm to provide clients with a “bespoke service”, principally in sports, entertainment and media law.

The chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has responded to strongly-worded criticisms this week from the Legal Services Board by the describing its report as “the best ever” received from the oversight regulator. However, Mr Philip admitted that there were parts of the report and performance review where the SRA had a “different opinion”.

The lack of independence between the legal regulators and representative bodies risks undermining the credibility of regulation and allows the likes of the Law Society and Bar Council to delay reforms that would benefit competition, the Legal Services Board said yesterday.

The Legal Services Board has strongly criticised the Solicitors Regulation Authority over failures in its enforcement work and IT systems – and also warned about the risk that the overhaul of the Handbook “may be too much” for firms and the regulator to cope with. However, the LSB said the legal regulators collectively had all made “substantial progress”.

A barrister who pestered three women at a chambers summer party with suggestive movements and comments has been fined £1,800 by a Bar disciplinary tribunal. It said he failed to act with integrity and behaved in a way likely to diminish the trust and confidence the public places in a barrister or the profession.

A family law barrister who told his chambers that he was acting for a lay client pro bono, and then tried to hide the e-mail trail that proved the client had actually paid him more than £15,000, has been reprimanded and suspended, among several recent Bar disciplinary rulings.

Almost half of law firms have already moved to the new approach of ‘continuing competence’ that no longer includes collecting CPD points – nearly six months ahead of it becoming compulsory.Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board has announced that similar CPD regime for barristers will go live in January 2017.

Ignorance about fees, lack of public awareness and “excessive correspondence” from clients are just some of the challenges faced by direct access barristers, a major report by the Bar Standards Board and Legal Services Board has revealed. However, the “overwhelming consensus” was that direct access work would grow in the next few years.

A direct access service providing the public and businesses with fixed-fee unbundled access to barristers, claims to have doubled its turnover in each of the last two years and expects to grow next year. Absolute Barrister has also designed what it says is the first case management system for direct access work.

The Bar Standards Board is to investigate whether male barristers with new-born children should be entitled to a form of shared parental leave, with the Bar Council calling for provisions which would give them a rent rebate from their chambers while not working.