Barristers

At the present rate, it will be 100 years before the percentage of black and minority ethnic QCs mirrors the general population, an event on improving race equality at the Bar heard last month. One black QC said there were times when he had turned up at court in a suit and was seen as anyone but the lawyer.

A barrister involved in a public spat with another barrister has failed in her attempt to judicially review a police decision to issue her with a prevention of harassment letter, which she claimed breached her human rights. Barbara Hewson said her tweets had to be seen in the context of a wider campaign against her.

A senior barrister has been suspended for failing to pay over a period of nearly five years what was due to a senior clerk at his previous chambers, of which he was head, when it was dissolved. A Bar disciplinary tribunal said the treatment of the clerk was made worse by the fact that he had held his post for 32 years.

A barrister has been disbarred for lying about her qualifications and experience, including a claim that she had saved 10 men from the death penalty in Malawi. Anisah Ahmed was trying both to obtain a pupillage and persuade the Bar Standards Board to reduce its length.

The Bar Standards Board has backtracked on many of the elements of its plan to force barristers to publish prices and service information – most notably by suggesting that instead of putting hourly rates on their websites, chambers should simply have to tell potential clients to contact them for a quote.

If the Legal Services Board is serious about promoting access to justice it must end its silence on the legal aid cuts, lawyers’ organisations have said. The Bar Council accused the oversight regulator of acting like “another department of government” by refusing to comment.

Legal regulators have urged the Legal Services Board to use its review of the internal governance rules to give them greater independence from their representative bodies. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said the rewrite of the rules should allow it to become a “separate legal entity” from the Law Society.

Making membership of the Inns of Court optional for barristers would disadvantage those with the least “social capital”, the Bar Council has warned. It strongly defended the role of the Inns, the minimum 12-month period for pupillages, and compulsory Inns of Court dinners for students.

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate a law firm led by a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, it has emerged. No practising barristers will be involved in the firm, but its principal is also an unregistered (ie, non-practising) barrister.

The Bar Standards Board is to consider requiring that chambers have a ‘work allocation officer’ as part of its Women at the Bar equality project, it emerged yesterday. It will also look at whether women returning after maternity leave should not have to pay any contribution from their fees to chambers for a limited time.