Barristers

Four criminal law barristers have appealed to the Supreme Court in their judicial review of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) – despite a costs bill which already totals £215,000, Legal Futures can reveal.

Anomalies in the appointment of panel members to Bar disciplinary tribunals between 2006 and 2011 did not affect the validity of their findings, the Court of Appeal decided yesterday.

The Bar Standards Board has turned to the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives to provide training to members of staff without legal qualifications. Meanwhile, ILEX Professional Standards – CILEx’s regulatory arm – is on the hunt for a new chief executive.

The first lawyer to be ‘named and shamed’ by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) for a series of complaints has argued that he is only “trying to adapt to new market forces”.

Junior barristers should get themselves accredited for public access work and act in cases where people are currently relying on paid McKenzie Friends, the new Bar Council chairman has said as he promised to promote direct access to the public.

Vanessa Davies, director of the Bar Standards Board (BSB), has apologised “for any impression that may have been created that we do not take our regulatory obligations seriously” after the BSB failed to launch a review of the standard contractual terms and the cab rank rule.

A barrister has been disbarred for lying about submitting an immigration application on behalf of a client’s mother-in-law. It also emerged at a Bar disciplinary tribunal that Michael William Wainwright was not qualified to act as a public access barrister.

A request by the Bar Council for law firms to be given automatic access to BARCO has been rejected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, it has emerged.

The Bar Council has warned of a potential “cost to quality”, following an announcement from the Bar Standards Board (BSB) that from next month it will only accredit CPD providers, and not individual courses.

The Bar Standards Board has doubled its prediction of how many entities it expects to be overseeing by the end of 2015 after receiving Legal Services Board approval to regulate businesses.

A barrister who successfully appealed the decision of a previous disciplinary tribunal was yesterday ordered by a new tribunal panel to be disbarred. He was originally disbarred for failing to disclose previous criminal convictions for possessing CS gas and wilfully obstructing the police.

The Bar Standards Board has issued an immediate suspension order preventing barrister Michael Shrimpton from practising. Mr Shrimpton was convicted of communicating false information at Southwark Crown Court last week.

The Bar Standards Board has apologised for the “inordinately slow” progress in implementing Legal Services Act changes that will enable barristers to practice in novel ways, as it set out a timetable for broadening its reach into entity regulation.

Mr Justice Green, chairman of the Advocacy Training Council, has condemned the lack of a “level playing field” for publicly funded advocates, which is leading to the practice of “selling litigation rights”.

Two barristers have been disbarred for repeatedly refusing to pay a total of almost £12,000 between them in fines and costs. Meanwhile, In a separate ruling, a tribunal disbarred another barrister for conduct representing a “persistent departure from the standards expected of a barrister”.