News

2003
“The South Eastern Circuit Bar Mess series of lectures on ‘The Art of Advocacy’” - CPD accredited – 8 hours
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2012 Lecture Series

Profession

Barristers can definitely be paid for their work on magistrates’ court criminal cases, the Bar Council has confirmed.

Children

Cases of parents abducting children overseas are continuing to rise, a report by Lord Justice Thorpe’s office of international family justice has revealed.

The Bar Standards Board would like to thank barristers who have now registered with the new Barrister Connect website.

Improving access to the Bar: a student’s perspective

Frances Aldson responds to David Pittaway QC’s Counsel article on the Bar’s diversity record and argues that chambers should look beyond a private school/Oxbridge education in their search for excellence  

Predominantly white, middle-class, private school and Oxbridge-educated. Such is the image of the Bar that the profession has been working hard to shift in the six years since the Entry to the Bar Working Party was formed under the chairmanship of Lord Neuberger. Much has been achieved in that time, and the Bar’s commitment to further diversity remains strong, evidenced in the article “End of term report” by David Pittaway QC in February’s Counsel. Yet in describing barriers to the Bar as largely “perceived”, the article neglects the real obstacles still faced by students from non-private school and non-Oxbridge backgrounds in accessing the profession.

The BSB is required, by the Equality Act 2010 Specific Duties Regulations, to publish one or more objectives which meet any strand of the general equality duty. The general duty requires public bodies to pay due regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; 
• advance equality of opportunity between different groups; and 
• foster good relations between different groups.  

There is good news in the Chennai case brought to stop 31 law firms from undertaking any kind of legal work in India: AK Balaji v The Government of India, Ashurst LLP, White & Case et al (WP5614/2010)).

Profession

The Legal Ombudsman may publicly name lawyers prior to a decision being made on their case where it is in the public interest to do so or there is a “pattern of complaints”.

The Singapore Parliament has just relaxed the laws governing the ability of foreign counsel to appear in their courts, and Singapore is rapidly positioning itself as a major legal market for Asia. Korea is in the middle of a three year process of opening up to foreign law firms and has a strong export market which offers opportunities for the Bar. The purpose of the trip, to which 13 barristers signed up, was to build relations with the local Bar and to promote the Bar of England and Wales in both markets to the local law firms and in-house counsel.

Profession

Junior barristers could be adversely affected by a Court of Appeal case on costs recovery, the Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) has warned.  In the three linked cases of  ‘Dockerill v Tullett; Macefield v Bakos; Tubridy v Sarwar’, the Court held that children should not be allowed full recovery of costs in personal injury cases settling below the small claims threshold.