Barristers

Self-employed barristers are “data controllers” and not “data processors” for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as they need to be able to act independently of instructing solicitors, the Bar Council has said.

The link between ethnicity and success on the Bar professional training course and in attaining pupillage is more nuanced than the big gap between white and non-white candidates presented by the Bar Standards Board, the Bar Council has claimed. New research said some ethnic groups performed as well as their white counterparts, while others did not.

The Bar Standards Board is reviewing whether there are “unjustified and discriminatory barriers to pupillage” at the advertising and recruitment stage, Legal Futures can reveal. Forming part of the Future Bar Training programme, it reflects concerns that access to pupillage is one of the biggest barriers to increasing diversity at the Bar.

An experienced barrister has been suspended from practice for seven months for repeating false rape, assault and conspiracy to murder claims about a fellow barrister in the robing rooms of Crown Courts. He also contacted that barrister’s wife, a solicitor, on LinkedIn, and suggested that her husband was in trouble.

A disbarred barrister whose bid to rejoin Gray’s Inn and starting practising again after 15 years was refused has lost an appeal to the High Court. An inns’ conduct committee said there was insufficient evidence to rebut the inference that he would reoffend, and a BSB review panel upheld this ruling, which the barrister then appealed.

A new law firm regulated by the Bar Standards Board aims to attract young barristers and solicitors interested in working together. Black Antelope Law is made up of two barristers, both of whom work on a direct access basis, and two solicitors. The lawyers work partly from home.

The Bar Standards Board is considering a rule change which would mean chambers would have to include sexual orientation and religion in the diversity data they publish on their websites. It said the move might help sets of chambers attract a more diverse workforce, but there could be “security implications” for those with high numbers of barristers who were of LGBT+ or from a particular religion.

There is a “concerning tendency on the part of the advocates simply to interrupt each other in an effort to advance their competing submissions”, a High Court judge has said as he reviewed a hearing that turned into a “shouting match”.

Dinners at the Inns of Court will remain part of the world of prospective barristers after the Bar Standards Board decided to maintain the role of the inns in their training. But in the light of cases where barristers and students have been found to have lied about their qualifications, the regulator is introducing greater checks on students’ backgrounds.

The issue of judicial bullying has come up again, with more barristers outlining the behaviour they have faced in court and the Bar Council chairman condemning “bullying or inappropriate treatment” by judges. The leader of the Northern Circuit has advised using informal lines of communication through heads of chambers to handle bullying that is not “egregious”.