Tag Results

Ian Dodd of the Bar Consultancy Network responds to our article earlier this week on the apparent disappearance of the ProcureCo concept a little over two years after the Bar Council launched it with great fanfare.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board have been warned to improve the way they regulate immigration practitioners or risk enforcement action by the Legal Services Board – including the ultimate sanction of losing their ability to regulate the area at all.

There is a “small but material rate of non-compliance” by solicitors with their complaints-handling requirements – and some bad attitudes towards complaints – confidential research by the Solictors Regulation Authority has found.

Competition between solicitors and barristers is to step up a gear with Bar Standards Board plans to allow counsel with less than three years’ practising experience – so-called ‘baby barristers’ – to start accepting public access instructions.

It has been gratifying that both the national and legal media have at last caught up with the series of revelations that Legal Futures has been reporting on since March over problems with the Bar’s disciplinary regime. Last week, suddenly, it featured on the Today programme, as well as in The Times, which in turn woke up some legal rags to what has been happening.