Chambers

From 2012, chambers will be required both to set up and contribute to a “qualifying pension arrangement” for clerical and administrative   staff. Careful preparation will prevent an adversely negative impact  on chambers’ budgets, advises Neill Millard.  

For over a year, the Bar Council has been engaging with barristers to introduce “ProcureCos”, the model procurement company which will allow sets of chambers to contract directly with those who purchase legal services. It is anticipated that in the future chambers will need to become more corporate and to offer an enhanced and robust service that will survive any future due diligence requirements that Government may introduce. 

The Bar Council trips to the Gulf help open up doors that are not available to individual practitioners or chambers, writes Peter Lodder QC.  

It has never been more important to find and develop new markets for the Bar. The Business Development Mission to Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar – which took place between 3 and 9 December 2010 – came less than a month after the Government published its Green Paper, Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales. We did not need this incentive, but it added to the significance that those who came from practice areas more readily associated with international work, were joined on this trip by criminal practitioners. 

David Wurtzel meets Adam Sampson, the Chief Ombudsman and Chief Executive of the Legal Ombudsman, the new scheme established by the Office of Legal Complaints to handle consumer legal complaints 

A working party of about 100 barristers, clerks and practice managers from the criminal, family, civil, commercial and chancery Bar has been set up to advise sets of chambers on how to contract directly with the LSC.

The Inns are alive with the sound of music. Vanora Bennett explores the world of the other dedicated professionals of the Inns of Court 

At about five o’clock on any day of the week, the Inns of Court will be busy with preoccupied men and women in black, trundling wheelie bags of documents back to chambers after a busy day in court. Yet even the most hurried barristers may slow and smile as they pass the honey stone of Temple Church. The sound that prompts this reaction is the pure treble voices of the Temple’s choirboys drifting out into the evening air – the other dedicated professionals of the Inns, still practising. 

A thriving music scene 

The Temple Choir – 18 boys serving an apprenticeship lasting five or six years, and 12 professional choirmen – is (in my possibly prejudiced view as the parent of a Temple choirboy) one of the most remarkable features of the thriving music scene at the Inns of Court. The CD released by the choir this summer – “The Majesty of Thy Glory” – reveals an extraordinary musical combination of poise and passion. The choir’s repertoire ranges from cantatas to Christmas carols. This might not be so astonishing if the only performers were the knowledgeable choirmen, building up their London singing careers – but it is an almost incredible achievement for the schoolboys who, whenever sighted in the flesh, dodging between long thin black-clad legs outside the church, seem to have nothing more remarkable than football or skateboards on their minds. 

Name: Lee Tyler
Position: Senior Clerk
Chambers:  2 Temple Gardens 

Are your chambers’ details being used in connection with online fraud? Caroline Kean and Rachel Barber advise on protecting chambers from uninvited and unauthorised association with bogus websites 

Name: Andrew Argyle
Position: CEO
Chambers:  Zenith Chambers 

Barristers are eyeing up the opportunities presented by the new legal business structures, with 43 per cent interested in setting up shop with solicitors. 

The Bar Standards Board is to conduct a YouGov survey among barristers, clerks and practice managers on their opinions and expectations regarding the new business structures permitted under the Legal Services Act 2007.  The survey will be emailed by YouGov, the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks and the Legal Practice Managers Association.