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Taryn Lee and Toby Craig look forward to this year’s Bar Conference on Saturday 5 November and explain how the Bar can overcome a period of great change to ensure a bright future.
As barristers, clerks, practice managers, solicitors and many others come together on Saturday 5 November to take part in this year’s 26th Annual Bar Conference, the Bar looks around and finds change in almost everything it sees. The legal profession has been subject to a range of new regulation and legislation in recent years, coupled with a deep financial crisis which has affected all professions and created stark challenges and strong opportunities.
This year’s event provides a platform for the profession, collectively, to determine how it wants to offer its services in a rapidly evolving legal landscape. It will also provide a showcase of the very best the Bar has to offer as a dynamic, directly accessible and highly mobile profession, which works in the public interest and in the interests of its diverse and growing client base.
The theme
The theme for this year’s Conference is Shaping the future: A modern Bar for a modern market. Many barristers are instinctively uncomfortable with the idea of competing in a marketplace, but much of the Bar has been doing exactly that for some time. All the indications are that the trend towards competition is continuing.
The Bar has the expertise and experience to thrive. It must engage with how it intends to meet the challenges ahead, whilst preserving all of the values and qualities that set the Bar apart. In order to flourish, barristers will have to be more prepared to see the services they provide as a business, which fits the demands of modern professional clients, and in a world of direct access, consumers.
What’s in it for you?
Just to get it out of the way, up to 7.5 CPD points are available once again, but it offers more than that:
Workshops
The Conference workshops offer a range of specialist sessions, hosted by Specialist Bar Associations, Bar Council Committees and other Bar Groups. All following the Conference theme, the workshops will include criminal, family, commercial, civil, regulatory, international and equality issues. Three highlights are:
1)What a difference a year makes: Working with the Coalition and the Comprehensive Spending Review – Criminal Bar Association Chairman, Max Hill QC, will moderate a speaking panel which will discuss:
2) Direct Access work in the 21st Century – arranged by the Access to the Bar Committee and Public Access Bar Association, Susan Jacklin QC and Marc Beaumont will:
3) What entity regulation could mean for you – arranged by the Bar Standards Board, the session will contemplate:
Speakers
The highlights:
We are delighted to welcome Robert Webb QC, who will deliver this year’s keynote address, offering his perspectives on the opportunities ahead. A key figure with a glittering CV in both the legal and business worlds, Robert was Head of Chambers of 5 Bell Yard for 10 years, before being appointed General Counsel at British Airways from 1998 to 2009. Now a door tenant at Brick Court, Robert is currently Chairman of Autonomy Plc, BBC Worldwide and Sciemus Ltd. He is a Non-Executive Director of the BBC, the London Stock Exchange, Argent Group Plc and Hakluyt Limited.
The Conference will close with a plenary Open Forum, providing a timely debate on Life after legal aid. This session will consider what might fill the gap left by the wholesale withdrawal of legal aid from some areas, in terms of insurance or alternative funding systems. Moderated by presenter and broadcaster, Simon Fanshawe, panellists will include:
Michael Smyth CBE, who spent twenty years as a partner at leading global law firm, Clifford Chance, including taking overall responsibility for its pro bono activities;
The Honourable Mrs Justice Theis DBE, and Peter Smith, Managing Director of Legal Expenses at FirstAssist Legal Protection.
To register
Since 1986, the Annual Bar Conference has been a highlight in the Bar’s calendar and is the only conference which brings together all members of the Bar community for a full day of debate, discussion and networking.
To register for this year’s Bar Conference, please log in to the conference website at www.barcouncil.org.uk or call 020 7611 1492.
Taryn Lee Chair of the Bar Conference Organising Board
Toby Craig The Bar Council’s Head of Communications
This year’s event provides a platform for the profession, collectively, to determine how it wants to offer its services in a rapidly evolving legal landscape. It will also provide a showcase of the very best the Bar has to offer as a dynamic, directly accessible and highly mobile profession, which works in the public interest and in the interests of its diverse and growing client base.
The theme
The theme for this year’s Conference is Shaping the future: A modern Bar for a modern market. Many barristers are instinctively uncomfortable with the idea of competing in a marketplace, but much of the Bar has been doing exactly that for some time. All the indications are that the trend towards competition is continuing.
The Bar has the expertise and experience to thrive. It must engage with how it intends to meet the challenges ahead, whilst preserving all of the values and qualities that set the Bar apart. In order to flourish, barristers will have to be more prepared to see the services they provide as a business, which fits the demands of modern professional clients, and in a world of direct access, consumers.
What’s in it for you?
Just to get it out of the way, up to 7.5 CPD points are available once again, but it offers more than that:
Workshops
The Conference workshops offer a range of specialist sessions, hosted by Specialist Bar Associations, Bar Council Committees and other Bar Groups. All following the Conference theme, the workshops will include criminal, family, commercial, civil, regulatory, international and equality issues. Three highlights are:
1)What a difference a year makes: Working with the Coalition and the Comprehensive Spending Review – Criminal Bar Association Chairman, Max Hill QC, will moderate a speaking panel which will discuss:
2) Direct Access work in the 21st Century – arranged by the Access to the Bar Committee and Public Access Bar Association, Susan Jacklin QC and Marc Beaumont will:
3) What entity regulation could mean for you – arranged by the Bar Standards Board, the session will contemplate:
Speakers
The highlights:
We are delighted to welcome Robert Webb QC, who will deliver this year’s keynote address, offering his perspectives on the opportunities ahead. A key figure with a glittering CV in both the legal and business worlds, Robert was Head of Chambers of 5 Bell Yard for 10 years, before being appointed General Counsel at British Airways from 1998 to 2009. Now a door tenant at Brick Court, Robert is currently Chairman of Autonomy Plc, BBC Worldwide and Sciemus Ltd. He is a Non-Executive Director of the BBC, the London Stock Exchange, Argent Group Plc and Hakluyt Limited.
The Conference will close with a plenary Open Forum, providing a timely debate on Life after legal aid. This session will consider what might fill the gap left by the wholesale withdrawal of legal aid from some areas, in terms of insurance or alternative funding systems. Moderated by presenter and broadcaster, Simon Fanshawe, panellists will include:
Michael Smyth CBE, who spent twenty years as a partner at leading global law firm, Clifford Chance, including taking overall responsibility for its pro bono activities;
The Honourable Mrs Justice Theis DBE, and Peter Smith, Managing Director of Legal Expenses at FirstAssist Legal Protection.
To register
Since 1986, the Annual Bar Conference has been a highlight in the Bar’s calendar and is the only conference which brings together all members of the Bar community for a full day of debate, discussion and networking.
To register for this year’s Bar Conference, please log in to the conference website at www.barcouncil.org.uk or call 020 7611 1492.
Taryn Lee Chair of the Bar Conference Organising Board
Toby Craig The Bar Council’s Head of Communications
Taryn Lee and Toby Craig look forward to this year’s Bar Conference on Saturday 5 November and explain how the Bar can overcome a period of great change to ensure a bright future.
As barristers, clerks, practice managers, solicitors and many others come together on Saturday 5 November to take part in this year’s 26th Annual Bar Conference, the Bar looks around and finds change in almost everything it sees. The legal profession has been subject to a range of new regulation and legislation in recent years, coupled with a deep financial crisis which has affected all professions and created stark challenges and strong opportunities.
The Bar Council will press for investment in justice at party conferences, the Chancellor’s Budget and Spending Review
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