Foges: Chambers are not going to be big enough to invest in what they need
Private-equity backed The Barrister Group (TBG) has launched a platform that will handle chambers’ operational requirements and also distribute briefs that they cannot handle.
TBG says VENTRiQ – named after the chambers of the heart – allows chambers to outsource all or some of operations and allow clerks to focus on building their barristers’ reputations and relationships.
The full suite of services covers: enquiry handling, triage and allocation; onboarding and due diligence; case management; billing, credit control and collections; complaints handling; and management reporting and operational insight.
The cost is 15% of all fees collected, but sets can choose fewer services at a lower subscription rate.
TBG became the first chambers to accept private equity funding in May 2023 after agreeing an eight-figure minority investment from LDC, part of Lloyds Bank.
VENTRiQ is the system used for TBG Chambers – what used to be called Clerksroom – and direct access service Barrister Connect, formerly Clerksroom Direct, although it has long supported two other chambers as well.
TBG said it already took instructions from 3,000 law firms and 5,000 members of the public every year and processed more than 2,000 new cases each month.
Chief executive Emily Foges said the move showed that “collaboration can be scaled without compromising autonomy”.
She described chamber as “groups of experts with reputations and relationships that need to be managed, promoted, looked after and developed”.
But at the same time, they have obligations “that are getting out of control given their scale” – regulation, data privacy, cybersecurity, customer service, technology and so on.
“No chambers are going to be big enough to invest in that sufficiently in their own right. They don’t want to be that big. It doesn’t make sense for chambers to be that big because they lose their identity when they get too big. So the idea is that chambers can look after their reputations, look after their relationships, their clerks can be focused on that part of their role.”
Without the right operational foundations, she argued, “there is a risk that increasing complexity pulls focus away from what makes chambers successful”.
TBG was not going to sell its software as a standalone product – “the market is not big enough to justify the investment required to build a decent SaaS model” – so VENTRiQ was essentially an extension of the collaboration that underpinned the chambers model, as was the ability to pass on work that they could not handle.
“Any chambers that comes onto the platform will be able to have somewhere to put that work that they can’t do for whatever reason, rather than having the customer have to put the phone down and try again somewhere else.”
In that event, the system would identify the best alternatives – with no preference given to TBG barristers – and, in the event still no barrister took the case on, there would then be an effort to clerk it manually. If still unsuccessful, it would be put on an online ‘opportunities board’ for any barrister signed up to VENTRiQ.
Ms Foges said one chambers she had spoken to saw this as a way to find work for junior barristers, particularly direct access cases, without having to advertise themselves as chambers open to direct access matters.
TBG barristers would not lose out, she stressed – work that comes to TBG will always be offered first to them – while it has too much direct access work anyway.
Ms Foges said TBG was, at heart, a technology and marketing business, and the strategy was to increase the number of chambers it supported rather than the size of TBG Chambers.
“Chambers getting big is not a good thing in itself,” she said. “There are some businesses where size really matters – but for chambers, which are not businesses anyway –it’s not.”
Members wanted “a sense of belonging and community” and that would be lost in a chambers of hundreds of members. TBG Chambers has around 180 members.
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