Barristers

The ex-City lawyer chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has questioned the recruitment methods of City law firms in making university students decide to become commercial lawyers so early on in their legal careers.

Legal regulators should in future rate the risk that firms present to the public on the basis of the diversity of their workforce, and focus supervision on those with the worst records, according to a report.

A High Court judgment that refused three applications for judicial review of barristers’ disciplinary decisions is to be appealed, after the court found that anomalies in tribunal panel member appointments did not affect the validity of the findings.

The circuits have come together with the Criminal Bar Association to indemnity the four barristers bringing a judicial review against the Legal Services Board over the legality of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates.

The Bar Standards Board has become the first frontline regulator to map out how it will take forward the Legal Education & Training Review (LETR). Earlier this week the BSB and Solicitors Regulation Authority were criticised for not collaborating on taking forward the LETR.

The High Court has capped the costs exposure of the four barristers bringing a judicial review against the Legal Services Board over the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates – but at a level 10 times the one they had proposed.

The regulators of solicitors and barristers have been accused of failing to collaborate closely enough on their responses to the Legal Education and Training Review, after they announced they would pursue independent strategies for ensuring competency.

The frontline regulators need lay chairs at the helm so as to cut the “overly strong ties” that still exist with their branches of the profession and have held back change, the Legal Services Board said yesterday. The call was met by strong opposition.

Criminal barristers were yesterday given permission to pursue their judicial review against the Legal Services Board over the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA). The legal challenge is that QASA “offends fundamental issues of justice”.

Junior barristers with less than three years’ practising experience can now undertake public access work. Existing public access barristers will also have up to two years to undertake additional top-up training or cease to conduct public access work.

The legal director of the Legal Services Board disagreed with its decision to approve the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates because he wanted to ensure that the impact on judicial independence had been fully considered, it has emerged.

A number of barristers have resigned from the Bar Standards Board’s prosecutor panel in protest at the imminent launch of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. They include a group of seven barristers from 18 Red Lion Court.

The Legal Services Board is to issue statute-backed guidelines to compel legal regulators to follow its vision of how reforms resulting from the Legal Education and Training Review should be implemented.

The Bar Standards Board has made a bid for formal independence from the barristers it oversees – the second frontline regulator to use the Ministry of Justice’s review of legal services regulation to make the case.

The Bar Standards Board has pledged to continue with preparations for the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates notwithstanding the judicial review against the scheme launched last week. Meanwhile, it has been criticised for its “mean” position over the costs of the JR.