Tag Results

The three biggest legal regulators have set out the terms of their two-year joint review of education and training. The review – being undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards – will examine the educational requirements placed upon individuals entering the sector and their regulatory function.

Legal Services Board (LSB) chairman David Edmonds will tomorrow back a review of legal education and training but warn that he expects it to be far-reaching, Legal Futures has learned. However, we understand that the LSB had originally planned to conduct the review itself, but has been persuaded to let the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards take the lead under the LSB’s oversight.

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.

In the short time I’ve known her, the chairwoman of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, Baroness/Dr Dianne Hayter (she seems to operate under her non-enobled title), has not minced her words. However, she is perhaps being restrained when she tells Legal Futures that the panel is “disappointed” with the agreement that has been struck over the introduction of lay majorities on the boards of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board.

The Law Society is to enlarge the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority so as to introduce parity between the number of solicitor and lay members in a deal struck with the Legal Services Board. It follows a similar agreement between the LSB and Bar Standards Board, whose offer to introduce parity on the road to a lay majority has been accepted.