Barristers

A law firm regulated by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives is aiming to supervise the training of solicitors in what is understood to be the first move of its kind. In a separate development, a law firm regulated by the Bar Standards Board has started a pupillage scheme, in what might well also be a first.

Solicitors setting up an alternative business structure this month in Marlborough, Wiltshire, have chosen to be regulated by the Bar Standards Board. It is understood to be the first time a BSB-regulated ABS has been created without barrister involvement.

The Bar Council has strongly attacked plans by the Bar Standards Board to force barristers to publish prices and internal complaints records. It said a requirement on chambers to publish hourly rates might actually end up decreasing transparency.

Professor Chris Bones has been named the first chair of the CILEx Group as the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives presses ahead with its major governance restructuring. He has experience in the private, public and third sectors, notably becoming the first non-academic dean of Henley Business School.

There has been a surprise 14% increase in the number of students enrolling on the Bar professional training course, it has emerged. It comes despite concern among Bar leaders that the burden of student debt is having a negative impact on the junior Bar.

The barrister who won the first stage of her battle with the Bar Standards Board at the Supreme Court last week said the impact of almost five years of litigation had been “completely devastating” for her law firm. She also suggested that the courts “have their own problem with discrimination”.

The decision of the Bar Standards Board to withdraw from the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates could be a “turning point” in the regulation of barristers, the in-coming chair of the Bar Council has said. Andrew Walker QC called for a “proper dialogue” between the Bar Council and the Bar’s regulators, both the Legal Services Board and BSB.

Graduates from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds are half as likely to obtain pupillages as their white peers, research for the Bar Standards Board has found. A second report found that the Bar was still viewed as “an elite, white, male-dominated profession with long-established traditions”.

The Supreme Court has given the green light to a barrister to bring a claim of racial discrimination against the Bar Standards Board, by overturning a decision that her case was brought out of time. Portia O’Connor, who is black, was the first barrister to become a partner in a legal disciplinary partnership.

The High Court has rejected one of the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB) first appeals against a disciplinary sanction, sharply criticising the way in which it was pursued. The court found that the BSB had “fallen far short” of showing that no reasonable tribunal could have decided to just reprimand high-profile barrister Lincoln Crawford.