Barristers

Many judges are not “advocacy trainers” and may produce “subjective” evaluations under the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates scheme, solicitor-advocates have warned. The Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates said there was a danger that some judges would assess on the basis of how they would have done it.

Barristers have been warned about instructing solicitors who are charging clients more for their services than counsel themselves are charging. The Bar Council has also cautioned self-employed barristers to be careful not to enter arrangements with solicitors which inadvertently turn them into employed barristers.

Barristers are at risk of being “squeezed out of the market by a declining case load, a surfeit of barristers and increasing competition from both other regulated legal professionals as well as unregulated service providers”, the Bar Standards Board has warned.

Judges should be able to opt out of assessing advocates under the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates if they believe it would be unfair, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said. Despite a Supreme Court ruling in its favour last year, QASA is still to get off the ground.

A dual-qualified employment lawyer, struck off as a solicitor last year for deceiving clients, has been disbarred for his “persistent dishonesty”. The Bar Standards Board said Jean Etienne Attala attempted to cover up the fact employment claims he was handling had been struck out.

A “tranche” of top commercial lawyers “has effectively become privately regulated by the clients they seek to serve”, a leading academic has said. Dr Steven Vaughan said some were “happy to be captured” by clients.

Criminal barristers who agree to work for law firms “for no fee” could be breaching the referral fee ban, the Bar Council has warned. The Bar Council said law firms were “wrong to suggest no fee is available” where counsel was “unassigned”.

A barrister who told a direct access client he had “all the same freedoms” as a solicitor to conduct litigation, when he did not, has lost a High Court appeal against his three-month suspension. Garnham J described Oliver White’s misconduct as “serious”.

Appeal judges have ruled that part-time judges who are working as barristers do not have to reveal details of “every ongoing piece of litigation” they are dealing with to ward off accusations of bias.

A pupil barrister who dishonestly copied his skeleton argument for a moot has been reprimanded and fined £1,000 by the Bar Standards Board – the strongest penalty meted out directly by the regulator this year.

The Bar Standard Board expects to regulate just 20 alternative business structures each year in the first three years after it becomes a licensing authority. Its prediction likely reflects caution prompted by the weaker than expected take-up of BSB-regulated entities.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has issued its first waiver to a law firm it regulates to allow it to use the Bar Council’s escrow service BARCO, with three other firms in the pipeline, it has emerged.

An influential Conservative MP has said he is “very keen” to see how the legal regulators could work “much more closely together”. Alberto Costa is a solicitor and member of the justice select committee.

The current arrangements for the regulation of barristers are “relatively cost-efficient” and there is no need to make the Bar Standards Board (BSB) fully independent, the incoming chairman of the Bar Council has said.

Setting up a new panel of criminal defence advocates could confuse the public, CILEx Regulation has warned. It said the legal regulators should control standards and quality.