Bar leaders, regulators and the Inns of Court are on a three-way collision course over the long-running debate about when barristers qualify.
Grumbling over “point of call” has simmered for nearly two decades, but the issue was given fresh impetus by last year’s Bar Council chairman, Nick Vineall KC, who lambasted the system as being confusing for the public.
Those criticisms have been picked up by Vineall’s successor, Sam Townend KC, who in his inaugural speech in January vowed that the rules would be amended during his one-year tenure.
On the face of it, the argument — and the solution — seems clear. Bar students are called by one of the four Inns of Court once they have successfully completed the vocational training course. That entitles those students to call themselves barristers. However, they are not allowed to practise until they complete a minimum one-year pupillage in chambers.
The Bar chairman wants to bring his side of the profession more or less into line with the larger solicitor branch. Prospective solicitors must complete qualifying work experience — which for more than 30 years has been a two-year training contract, but is now being reformed to include other models — before they are fully qualified.
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Townend has said that he is “committed” to moving the point of call for barristers to after the completion of pupillage. And Bar council officials are convinced that the power to make that relatively simple reform of the rules rests solely with the profession’s regulator, the Bar Standards Board.
“Each year brings thousands more to be called to the Bar that are not permitted to practise as barristers,” Townend says, noting that “these numbers increase every year, [which] poses a regulatory and consumer risk”.
Townend argues that “call to the Bar should only take place when a person satisfactorily completes pupillage”, adding that under the 2007 statute, “the decision on changes to the arrangements for people to enter the profession is a matter for the Bar Standards Board”.
But nothing is simple in legal profession regulation. Officials at the Bar watchdog are known to be uneasy with suggestions that amending the point of call could be achieved with the flick of a regulatory switch. The Times understands that the board takes the view that the Legal Services Act 2007 effectively pushes the issue over to the historic Inns of Court.
And it is thought that the Inns — as well as the providers of the Bar course — have a commercial interest in retaining the status quo. The providers especially earn hundreds of thousands of pounds from foreign students and lawyers who want to be called to the Bar in England but have no intention of practising in the jurisdiction. Instead they will gain kudos from the barrister title in their home markets.
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Forcing that cohort of overseas students to complete a pupillage in England and Wales before being called — with places already in relatively short supply — is likely to cause that market to crash.
For the time being, the Inns are keeping their powder dry. Greg Dorey, the sub-treasurer at Inner Temple, who speaks on the issue for all four Inns and the Council of the Inns of Court, notes that the issue has been bubbling since 2006, when the BSB last consulted on potential reform.
Dorey adds that an Inns working group was “examining available data ahead of any formal re-opening of the debate”, which sounds like coded language for delay. “The issue is complex, and Inns have at present no collective or individual views,” Dorey says.
The regulator is also being fairly coy. A spokesman acknowledges that “setting the date of call is a matter for the Bar Standards Board but we would wish to take the views of all our stakeholders into account as part of a wider assessment of the priority this issue should have in our wider strategy and to consider the case for any change in the light of our regulatory objectives”.
