News

The 16th Commonwealth Law Conference will take place in Hong Kong from 4th – 9th April 2009. This will be an outstanding opportunity to listen to some fascinating seminars and network with lawyers from common law jurisdictions, practitioners from the Asian continent and beyond. The International Committee is strongly encouraging members to attend and is holding a Bar Council reception at the Hong Kong Club on Monday 6 April, in co-sponsorship with COMBAR and the Chancery Bar Association, to which all English and Welsh Barristers attending the conference will be invited. For fur ther information on the conference programme and how to register please contact the secretariat at CLA@sas.ac.uk or visit www.commonwealthlaw2009.org. 

The Bar Standards Board has published the final report on its chambers monitoring pilot scheme. The Board has committed to developing a quality assurance scheme to monitor compliance by chambers with the Code of Conduct. The pilot scheme tested the proposed approach to chambers monitoring and ran from June until November 2008. It involved a representative sample of 35 sets of chambers and focussed on compliance requirements in respect of chambers complaints handling, pupillage and equality and diversity. 

The headlines from the report are: 

The development of a self-regulation system which is robust and credible is critical to the profession to protect and maintain its
reputation and also the reputation of the Board as a regulator;  

Of those Chambers in the pilot scheme there was only low level evidence of non-compliance and a significant amount of good practice in Chambers was identified. This is encouraging and supports a light touch approach but is no reason to be complacent; 

Any scheme needs to carry the confidence of the profession. Encouragingly, the large majority of Chambers in the pilot scheme were receptive to the idea of some monitoring of Chambers by the Board, but engagement with the whole profession on the purpose and motives of the scheme is crucial to ensure wholehearted acceptance; 

Chambers must be clear about what is expected of their policies and procedures in order to comply with the Code requirements. This was not always the case for those Chambers in the pilot scheme, particularly in respect of the requirements relating to equality and diversity. Model procedures and policies should therefore be developed to assist Chambers in this regard;  

 

Any efficient monitoring system must be supported by an increasingly sophisticated and robust IT system which draws information from existing databases into a central point so that risk assessment and analysis can be carried out;

The following twelve individuals were disbarred in 2008 and have not submitted an appeal: 

John Idowu Benedict - Failure to complete CPD, failure to pay administrative fines, failure to respond to complaints
John George Bernatt - Struck off Roll of Advocates and Solicitors in Malaysia for dishonesty
Bruce Anthony Hyman - Criminal conviction for perverting the course of justice
Naeem Sajid Khan - Conspired to create a set of chambers in order to circumvent the pupillage regulations and award himself a pupillage
Audrey Llewellyn-Evans (Donaghue) - Struck off the Roll of Solicitors for dishonesty
Shay Lotan - Failure to complete CPD, failure to pay an administrative fine, and failure to respond to a complaint
Nicola Jane Marshall - Criminal convictions for 11 drink driving related offences and failure to report such convictions
Tony Opwa-Otto - Non-practising barrister holding himself out as a barrister for the purpose of supplying legal services
Samuel Owusu-Afriyie - Failure to comply with an order to pay compensation to a former client
Toby Pomeroy - Failure to complete CPD, failure to pay an administrative fine, and failure to respond to a complaint
Shuhaiza Shuib - Struck off Roll of Advocates and Solicitors in Malaysia for dishonesty
Mark Jonathan Blane Stevenson - Failure to complete CPD, failure to pay an administrative fine, and failure to respond to a complaint 

The BSB publishes details of all disciplinary findings in the Complaints and Discipline section of its website. 

The International Committee will be holding a joint seminar with the British-Russian Law Association on 10 March 2009, 18.30 at Inner Temple. The topic will be “Extradition between the UK and Russia - an update on current judicial practice”. The issues discussed at this seminar should be highly interesting especially for members of the criminal bar. CPD will be available. Space is limited and interested members will need to register with Ruper t d’Cruz at ruper tdcruz@tenoldsquare.com. 

Lawyers suffering from stress can benefit from a new LawCare resource. The “wellbeing portal”, now available on www.lawcare.org.uk, is designed to assist in stress recognition and management. 

Funding for specialist advisers providing support in severe cases of family breakdown has been cut, in moves announced last month by the Ministry of Justice and Legal Services Commission. Lucy Theis QC, Chairman of the Family Law Bar Association, warned of two-fold risks: “These cuts will result in the inability of wives to secure proper financial provision from a husband determined to hide assets…The Government is making this area of practice less attractive for prospective barristers…This will deny vulnerable families and children effective access to justice.”

Leading figures in the liberalisation of India’s legal markets are to meet in New Delhi (23–26 April) to discuss the future of law for one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

The International Committee has worked with the “Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature (ENM)” to place twenty of its trainee judges with English and Welsh chambers specialising in criminal and family law for five weeks over February and March. The intention is that the trainee judges (auditeurs de justice) will gain an understanding of legal practice in England and Wales; in par ticular publicly funded work. 

To give the judges a warm introduction to London and the Bar Council, the International Committee organised a welcome event to coincide with their first day in chambers. Presentations were given on the Bar Council (James Dingemans QC), the comparison of the position of the victim in both the French and English legal systems (His Honour Judge Brooke QC), Opening up the family cour ts and forced marriage (Mrs Justice Parker) and Contemporary issues in criminal law (His Honour Judge Kramer). The group then attended the Dame Ann Ebswor th Memorial Lecture, followed by a small reception to meet the tutors, hosted by Desmond Browne QC. The International Committee were pleased to hear more about the judges’ training programme from Jean-François Thony, Director of the ENM. 

A proposal that barristers over 20 years’ call should be able   to apply for the appellation “senior barrister” was rejected by the Bar Council on 24 January. 

THE Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) have today welcomed the publication of a consultation paper on a proposed payment scheme for Very High Cost Cases (VHCCs). 

The proposals have been drafted by a steering group comprising representatives from the legal profession, including the Bar Council, the Ministry of Justice, the CBA, the Law Society, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Legal Services Commission (LSC). The steering group was tasked with the production of a viable scheme which would ensure appropriate fees for advocates conducting VHCCs, to replace the contract system previously announced by the LSC. 

With a new scheme due to come into effect by July 2009, the consultation period for these proposals will run from the 19th December 2008 until the 30th January 2009. The proposals include: