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The Bar Standards Board (BSB) will become a specialist regulator of entities providing advocacy services, if proposals set out today are approved. Under the plans, BSB-regulated entities could not have passive investors, would need a majority of managers who can practise as advocates in the higher courts, and could only have a maximum of either 10% or 25% of non-lawyer managers.

Junior barristers are facing huge rises in their practising certificate fees under reforms unveiled by the Bar Council. Women and black and minority ethnic barristers are set to be disproportionately hit by the increases, although the Bar Council says the waiver system for low earners will offset this.

Until recently barristers have not featured that much in talk about alternative business structures. But the Bar Council’s launch of a corporate vehicle that can be attached to chambers raises some difficult questions that barristers have to address about how they will develop their businesses in the future, and what may become of the junior bar.