News

Means testing is to be introduced in the Crown Court from 2010. 

The Family Bar Association (FLBA) has presented the Ministry of Justice with a dossier of case studies showing the harm that could result if funding cuts to the legal aid system go ahead. 

More than half of the UK’s legal profession and three-quarters of serving judges were independently educated, according to government research. 

The EP is calling on the other institutions to create an EU criminal justice area. See: 

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A6-2009-0262&language=EN 

The employed and self-employed Bar must work more closely together, Desmond Browne QC, Chair of the Bar, has said. Speaking at a joint Bar Council and Bar Association, Finance and Industry reception, Mr Browne QC said: “As financial pressures mount, we must work more closely together on matters of mutual interest—particularly if the traffic between the employed and self-employed Bar is set to increase”. He also called for the number of pupillages in commerce and industry to be increased. Rules should be simplified to allow this, he added.

THE potential human cost of denying vulnerable families and children access to expert legal support in care and related cases was revealed in a dossier of case studies, showing the difficulties which are already being encountered by family barristers as they seek to represent their clients to the best of their abilities. 

The Family Law Bar Association (FLBA) submitted the case studies to the Ministry of Justice, which is overseeing deep cuts to funding support for vulnerable families and children as part of a major attack of the legal aid system. The FLBA is campaigning for no further cuts in a system which is already creaking under the strain of societal change and which faces greater demands for intervention to protect children at risk in the wake of Baby P. 

Baroness Julia Neuberger is to chair a new Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity, charged with the task of identifying diversity barriers and recommending ways to make the judiciary more representative of the people it serves. The panel will report back to the Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, in November 2009.

“Six million is a big number”, Lord Justice Stanley Burnton told the group assembled in Temple Church on May 12 for the opening of “Lawyers without rights:  Jewish lawyers in Germany under the Third Reich”, but the impact of this exhibition is to help us to remember that it represented a lot of individuals.  

DESMOND Browne QC, Chairman of the Bar Council, speaking at the 7th Biennial Minority Lawyers’ Conference, has highlighted the Bar’s ongoing commitment to increasing diversity and access to the profession. 

Approximately 50% of those entering the profession are currently women, with around 21% from BME backgrounds, up from 16% in 2004. This record reflects the work of the Bar Council to increase access to the profession, for example via mentoring schemes which allow schoolchildren an insight into life at the Bar. The Conference followed the first research paper from the Cabinet Office Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, published on the 14th April, which suggested mentoring as a key mechanism for ensuring that able candidates from less well-off backgrounds can aspire to join the professions. 

The BSB is pleased to announce that the new Independent Observer, Alan Baines, will take up post on 1 June 2009. As part of the BSB’s improvements to the system for handling complaints against barristers, the role of the Independent Observer was created to check all aspects of the system to ensure that it is operating in line with the agreed objectives and procedures. 

Alan has worked as an independent consultant advising a number of private companies on commercial strategy, risk and governance.