Barristers

The Bar Standards Board has waded into the controversy over government plans to introduce price competitive tendering in criminal work by warning that it risks causing irreparable harm to the credibility of the criminal justice system and incentivises lawyers to encourage guilty pleas.

The Bar Standards Board will be unable to regulate alternative business structures effectively until it learns more about users of barristers’ services and undergoes “significant cultural change”, according to the Legal Services Board.

The Bar Standards Board is already projecting a £161,000 overspend on its 2013-14 budget, which itself is £1.2m (or 30%) higher than the previous 12 months, Legal Futures can report. But it is also expecting QASA to boost income.

A barristers’ chambers which offered an unfunded pupillage to a former police chief constable has lost its appeal against a Bar Standards Board decision that the move ran foul of equality rules designed to stop ‘rich kids’ from self-funding.

The prospect of barristers boycotting the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates became almost certain on Saturday after all but one of more than 1,000 members of the South Eastern Circuit said they would refuse to sign up to it.

The chairman of the Criminal Bar Association has launched a wide-ranging attack on the government, Stobart Barristers, Bar Standards Board and the “muzzled” judiciary, while warning that plea-only advocates could damage the unity of barristers and solicitors against price competitive tendering.

An end to the bans on self-employed barristers conducting litigation and sharing premises or forming associations with non-barristers is in sight as the Bar Standards Board laid out the first stage of its major liberalisation programme.

The row over Legal Services Board-commissioned research that recommended removal of the cab-rank rule stepped up a further notch yesterday after one of the academics who conducted it hit back at the critiques published by the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board.

A barrister who has built a thriving direct access practice through a public-facing website is considering whether an alternative business structure will help him deal with the problems caused by the ban on conducting litigation.

A last-minute Law Society bid to delay the controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) until after the government’s consultation on price competitive tendering for criminal work was yesterday rejected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The prospect of barristers striking over the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) has moved closer after two more circuits voted to support it. However, the Bar Standards Board has hit back at claims that QASA is linked to price competitive tendering.

Barristers can now speak to the press about their cases, after the Bar’s Code of Conduct was changed. The end to the rule prohibiting barristers from expressing personal opinion publicly in relation to their work finally brings them in line with solicitor-advocates.

The Legal Services Board has criticised the Bar Standards Board’s failure to apply the cab-rank rule to public access work and said this omission will reduce the impact of rule changes that widen the scope for barristers dealing directly with clients.

Criminal barristers are preparing to boycott the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), but only if there is a pledge from counsel outside those circuits affected first not to step in and take the work.

Barristers yesterday launched a two-pronged assault on a controversial academic report recommending that the cab rank rule be removed from the Bar Code of Conduct, with twin assessments by high-powered silks contradicting its findings.