Barristers

The Bar Standards Board is to launch a ‘professional statement’ which, like the ‘competence statement’ being developed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, will attempt to describe the knowledge and skills barristers should possess at the point of qualification.

A new Criminal Bar Association campaign to ensure that barristers and higher court advocates compete on a “level playing-field” does not amount to a “cry for war”, its chairman has said.

Just 129 barristers have so far taken up the opportunity to conduct litigation since the restriction was removed in January, it has emerged, but one of the first to do it has described the move as “a real opportunity for the Bar”.

The Bar Standards Board is facing a bill for over £100,000 after the Court of Appeal ruled that there was no need for it to be separately represented at the hearing of a judicial review against the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) launched its ‘future Bar training’ programme this morning, which includes “considering the future of the Bar Professional Training Course” (BPTC).

The Bar Standards Board has told three chambers with financial problems to “prepare emergency plans” to minimise the impact on clients should they be forced to close.

The legal regulators should have full independence, and ‘approved regulator’ role of the Bar Council, Law Society and other professional bodies should be abolished, the chair of the Bar Standards Board argued yesterday.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is investigating the extent to which barristers have been accepting work from solicitors without entering into contracts, or accepting terms “contrary to their regulatory obligations”.

Rabi Sukul, a former barrister accused of drafting false grounds of appeal for a young criminal client, has won the right to a fresh disciplinary tribunal hearing on whether or not he should have been disbarred.

The Court of Appeal today comprehensively dismissed four criminal law barristers’ challenge to the Legal Services Board’s approval of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. With the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, giving the lead judgment, the court found that the scheme is lawful.

Ben Conlon, former head of the pupillage committee at 3 Temple Gardens, has launched a judicial review arguing that the Visitors to the Inns of Court should made up only of High Court judges.

Nicola Sawford of Serle Court has become the first chambers chief executive ever appointed a board member of the Bar Standards Board. A chartered accountant, she has been in her post for over 10 years.

The High Court has ordered a Jersey lawyer to pay an English barrister’s fee, dismissing a claim that the fee was an honorarium which was not legally enforceable.

There has been a hitch in the Legal Services Board approving the Bar Standards Board’s bid to regulate entities, meaning that the LSB has had to issue a formal warning notice that it is considering whether to refuse the application.

The number of barristers either disbarred or suspended nearly doubled in the last year, the Bar Standards Board has revealed as it bids to focus more on serious wrongdoing.