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The three main professional bodies have all set out their stalls against lawyers being “named and shamed” if found guilty by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) of providing an inadequate service. The Bar Council has this week joined the Law Society and Institute of Legal Executives in criticising the idea.

Barristers should be allowed to give their own opinions to the media in cases in which they are involved, the Bar Standards Board is to recommend. It is also set to introduce the term “unregistered barrister” to denote a barrister without a practicing certificate who is providing unreserved legal services to the public or small businesses.

Every chambers, “from the most vulnerable of publicly funded sets to the most smug and complacent of specialist, privately funded sets”, needs to prepare for change, with the Bar’s ProcureCo model opening up “hundreds of millions of pounds of work” to barristers, the chairman of the Bar Council said on Saturday. Addressing the annual Bar conference, Nicholas Green QC also expressed his “moral qualms” about the number of students trying to enter the Bar compared to the number of available pupillages, and about how many of those who fail to find vocational training are instead creating a “paralegal workforce”, saying the aptitude test being introduced for bar students may not be enough.

The introduction of controversial new standard contractual terms for solicitors instructing barristers has been further delayed by confusion over the split of responsibilities between the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board, Legal Futures can reveal. The BSB also has a new director and has formally launched its chambers monitoring scheme.

The “golden age” is over for barristers as the Bar faces falling income and shrinking numbers, a new report has claimed. However, the Bar still has “an enormous amount in its favour”, according to leading legal consultancy Jomati, which also found evidence of a correlation between the best-performing sets and large numbers of QCs and marketing staff.