Barristers

Access to justice includes information about lawyers’ fees, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has told the Bar Standards Board. It also called for more focus on barristers’ communication skills.

The Bar Council has called on the Bar Standards Board to review the rules on fair allocation of work for barristers, saying that regulatory attention on diversity should focus on career progression.

The government is “strongly” encouraging legal regulators to take action over lawyers who advise on the use of potentially unenforceable provisions in non-disclosure agreements.

Changes to the QC appointment regime aimed to help women apply for silk are to be introduced for the 2019 round, the body in charge of the scheme has announced.

An experienced barrister told a disciplinary tribunal that he was so drunk at a Bar Mess event he “cannot remember” his “entirely unacceptable” behaviour towards a male pupil.

The £30m that the Law Society levies on solicitors for its representative work is to be put under the microscope by the Legal Services Board next year.

A criminal barrister has caused a scandal in Australia after it emerged that she was acting as a police informant about her gangland clients at the same as she was defending them.

The Bar could be “sleep walking into a nightmare scenario” where new rules mean it has no involvement with its regulator, the incoming chairman of the Bar Council has warned.

Young female barristers have been urged to stand firm in the profession despite a widespread prevalence of sexual harassment at the Bar, especially at the level of inappropriate comments.

There were around 125 barristers reporting fees of more than £1m last year, and another 200 who brought in more than £500,000, new figures from the Bar Council have suggested.