Bar Council slams BSB’s “dilution” of barrister brand


BSB: training rule changes

The Bar Council has reacted with outrage to training reforms that it says would include automatically ‘passporting’ solicitors with rights of audience and academics through qualification as barristers, thus “diluting” the brand.

As its Future Bar Training project heads towards conclusion, the Bar Standards Board (BSB) consulted in July on new rules for its training framework, with the eight-week exercise ending this week.

In its response, the Bar Council warned that in practice the proposed changes would mean that a solicitor granted rights by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – which it claimed had “markedly less strict training requirements”, such as no pupillage – would be entitled to qualify as a barrister.

The Bar Council said: “It will unacceptably dilute the high standards rightly required of practising barristers; and it will provide an easy parallel route to the Bar for those practitioners who have failed the Bar’s entry and training requirements.”

It alleged a further rule change on partial exemptions was “scarcely better” in that it extended the exemption to many more with existing rights of audience, subject to an effective waiver of both the academic and vocational training elements, and also “if the BSB thinks fit”, pupillage.

It said: “It is easy to see that this will be attractive to solicitors who regard admission to the Bar as a badge of achievement, and who will recognise that this route to that badge is fundamentally less arduous than the route barristers currently take.

“It will swell the ranks of the Bar with those who will not have faced the same testing regime, and without giving the undiscerning public any means of distinguishing between the two at the point of instruction.”

The Bar Council objected to allowing any law teacher “of experience and academic distinction” an exemption from academic and legal vocational training. It said this right should not be automatic.

It complained too that a proposal to relax the requirement that a pupil must be individually supervised by a suitably qualified barrister, in the case of sets of chambers and other organisations, would “dilute pupil training”.

The response said: “We view this dilution of the vital work-based component of the pupil’s training as antithetical to the [regulatory objectives]…

“We urge the BSB to introduce appropriate safeguards, to ensure that this dilution does not take place.”

Tags:




Leave a Comment

By clicking Submit you consent to Legal Futures storing your personal data and confirm you have read our Privacy Policy and section 5 of our Terms & Conditions which deals with user-generated content. All comments will be moderated before posting.

Required fields are marked *
Email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Blog


Use the tools available to stop doing the work you shouldn’t be doing anyway

We are increasingly taken for granted in the world of Do It Yourself, in which we’re required to do some of the work we have ostensibly paid for, such as in banking, travel and technology


Quality indicators – peer recommendations over review websites

I often feel that I am banging the SRA’s drum for them when it comes to transparency but it’s because I genuinely believe in clarity when it comes to promoting quality professional services.


Embracing the future: Navigating AI in litigation

Whilst the UK courts have shown resistance to change over time, in the past decade they have embraced the use of some technologies that naturally improve efficiency. Now we’re in the age of AI.


Loading animation