Chambers

THE Bar Council has welcomed the decisions taken by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) which will permit members of the Bar to supply legal services within new business structures. The BSB has approved the creation of Legal Disciplinary Practices (LDPs) and Barrister only Partnerships (BoPs). Any wider decision to permit barristers to work in Alternative Business Structures (ABSs) will be deferred until the effects of the transitional LDP regime can be assessed and following further consultation in 2010.  The BSB’s decisions follow more than two years of careful deliberation by the Board and its Alternative Business Structures Working Group. 

The China sub-committee of the International Committee was pleased to welcome a delegation of nine office holders from the Tianjin Bar Association to London on 7 December. The Bar Council established a good relationship with the Tianjin Bar during a visit to the city in 2008 where it conducted a seminar on environmental law for an audience of about 100 local lawyers. The delegation was interested in strengthening the relationship between the Tianjin Bar Association and the Bar Council, learning about chambers management, meeting with some law schools interested in training young Chinese lawyers. To this end the delegation had meetings with Desmond Browne QC, BPP Law School, as well as a lunch with barristers in Lincolns Inn and a meeting at 39 Essex Street Chambers to learn more about the management of a commercial set. 

Desmond Browne QC sums up the current position and highlights the issues to be addressed in the near future 

The time is now come for my final Chairman’ s Column . In Chancery Lane people stop to ask me whether there is light at the end of the tunnel. I can only reply that with so little light, there still seems an awful lot of tunnel. 

Names: Iain Milligan QC and Brian Lee
Positions: Head of Chambers and Senior Clerk
Chambers: 20 Essex Street 

The BBC drama Criminal Justice 2 raised important social issues, believes James Woolf  

Last year I reviewed Criminal Justice for this magazine (see (2008) Counsel September, p 38). Its screening led to a public row between the Bar, and Peter Moffat, former barrister and writer of the series. Tim Dutton QC, last year’s Bar Chairman, accused the BBC of a woefully inaccurate depiction of the Bar, in particular because of the huge chasm between the on-screen barristers’ ethical practices and the actual Code of Conduct. Moffat’s response was to say that this was an overreaction, adding “[Timothy Dutton QC] wants to see things in black and white. At the Bar, just as in life, standards are all too often a different colour – grey.” My own view was that the series closely missed out on being brilliant because of these moments of implausibility. To cut a long story short, Moffat won a Bafta, the Bar forgot all about it and time marched on. 

Name: Gerard Hickie
Position: Chief Executive
Chambers: Littleton Chambers 

The Bar Council has published its response to the Legal Services Board’s wide-ranging discussion paper on Alternative Business Structures (ABS). 

The response from its Working Group on ABS reflects the Bar Council’s support for a pragmatic and proportionate approach to the liberalisation of the legal services market, as envisaged by Sir David Clementi in his review of legal services in England and Wales. 

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is working towards making decisions about barristers joining Legal Disciplinary Practices and Alternative Business Structures. 

As explained in the BSB’s response to the Legal Services Board’s discussion paper ’Wider access, better value, strong protection’, the BSB is concerned that some evidence is obtained to ensure that the effect on consumers is better understood. 

The Legal Services Board has a number of consultation papers out for consideration now and there are more to come through the rest of the year. The consultation papers concern various aspects of how the legal profession will be regulated in the future. 

Open consultations are: 

 

Consultation on rules governing the making of representations and the giving of evidence on the scope of the Reserved Legal Activities Consultation
closes – 5pm, 28 October 2009 

The Bar’s regulatory body has said it would be “wrong” for it to permit barristers to enter into Alternative Business Structures (“ABS”) without further research. 

Responding to the Legal Services Board’s (“LSB”) discussion paper on developing a regulatory regime for ABS, Wider access, better value, strong protection, the Bar Standards Board (“BSB”) called for more evidence about what sort of market is likely to be created, and its impact on the consumers of legal services.