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In the end, the Bar Standards Board probably didn’t have much of a choice but to become a regulator of advocacy focused alternative business structures. Without it, barristers and chambers that wanted to practise in new ways would have been forced to go off and find a new regulator – most likely the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate advocacy focused alternative business structures and allow barristers to conduct litigation, its board decided yesterday. However, it has placed significant restrictions on the range of entities it is prepared to regulate.

The legal regulatory system is “defective” and in time it might be right for a single regulator to replace the eight frontline regulators, the chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Charles Plant, told yesterday’s Legal Futures Conference.

The Legal Services Board is to launch an assessment of the regulation of immigration advice and services after taking over responsibility for overseeing frontline regulators in the field. The move will save the profession £110,000 in direct costs.

Regulators of alternative business structures could expose consumers to risk if they demand an overly high standard of proof in disciplinary hearings, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned. Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board is to consider switching to a civil standard of proof.