Barristers

A barrister working as a trade union’s in-house lawyer is considering a claim for false imprisonment against the Metropolitan Police after he was briefly arrested on a picket line.

A criminal law barrister who groped a Bar student he was mentoring during a drunken night out has been suspended for six months.

A barrister in a long-running dispute with fellow counsel has been suspended from practice for two years after sending her a series of “obscene or seriously offensive” tweets.

The Bar Standards Board has been told that it needs to act more quickly on how it plans to educate the public about barristers after its widely criticised decision to stop funding Legal Choices.

The Bar should focus on “real inclusion” and “actionable, practical steps” to improve diversity rather than tick boxes, a black barrister and human rights activist has argued.

Barristers are generally happy with their new continuing professional development regime but are struggling to understand the concept of ‘reflection’, independent research has found.

Market forces will mean that commercial sets without a diverse gender pool at all levels will soon find themselves losing work to more gender-equal sets, according to a circuit judge researching equality.

It is about time that men and women realise that they have “no right to judge a woman’s commitment to and ability to do her job based on her appearance”, a leading QC has declared.

The pre-1992 universities achieve the best results in the centralised exams taken by students on the Bar Professional Training Course, it has emerged.

The drive towards online or virtual justice puts advocacy and professional standards at risk, delegates at the Bar Council’s annual conference heard on Saturday.

A barrister suspended last month for offensive messages on Facebook posted one that was effectively a threat to kill a member of the public, it has emerged. They were also “misogynistic”.

A barrister jailed for making indecent photographs of children has been disbarred, while another disciplined by the SDT suspended, and a barrister who failed to appear at a hearing reprimanded.

Law schools are not taking advantage of the “enormous regulatory freedom” they have and instead are largely all offering the same kind of law degree, new research has found.

Chambers should give barristers the right to return to work after two or three years of parental leave, the Western Circuit Women’s Forum has said.

Communications giant BT has handed over ownership of its alternative business structure to listed law firm DWF, it has emerged. Meanwhile, an Italian law firm has set up a BSB-regulated ABS.