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Criminal law barristers have reached a new low of despondency, the chairman of the Bar Council has told Lord Chancellor Ken Clarke. Peter Lodder QC warned that the government’s legal aid cuts could also see the Bar return to “a professional enclave for the better-off” as students are discouraged by mounting debts.

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.

There has been a rise in the number of female QCs, but a massive mismatch with the number of women at the Bar remains, figures released today have shown. The “Bar Barometer also shows the extreme difficulties black and minority ethnic (BME) students have in securing pupillages.

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.

Solicitors are set to shoulder the vast majority of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and Legal Ombudsman’s (LeO) £25m annual running costs for the next three years at least, it emerged today. The LSB confirmed that it would proceed with its plan to levy its own £5m costs on the basis of the number of authorised persons overseen by each approved regulator, and most of LeO’s £20m costs based on the number of complaints generated by each group.