Tag Results

The Bar Standards Board has launched its final scheme for regulating advocacy-focused alternative business structures in what it described as a “declaration of intent” to become the regulator of choice for advocates.

The controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will now go live in April 2012, it emerged last week. We can also reveal that contingency plans have been drawn up for the judiciary not playing its expected role in QASA.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has hit back at opposition from the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Society to its application to grant rights to conduct advocacy and litigation. The Legal Services Board is currently considering the CLC’s application, and as one of its statutory consultees, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge has expressed his total opposition.

Magistrates’ court advocates who choose an assessment centre route to progress under the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) could pay as much as 15 times more than those who undergo judicial evaluation.

The Law Society has launched what appears to be a last-ditch bid to persuade the Legal Services Board to scrap the proposed scheme to assess the quality of criminal advocacy, saying there is no evidence to support the assertion that standards have fallen.