Criminal bar chief: unity can help resist 'extinction'
Criminal solicitors and barristers should stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ to oppose further fee cuts or risk ‘virtual extinction’ within five years, the new chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has warned.
In an interview with the Gazette, Michael Turner QC (pictured) reiterated the association’s opposition to government proposals to introduce a single fee covering both litigation and advocacy for Crown court cases. ‘One case one fee’ could be introduced next year, after consultation.
Turner said that the current graduated fee regime is already forcing solicitors to conduct more advocacy, even where some do not want to, which reduces the work for the bar. The new fee regime, which will mean ‘solicitors hold the purse strings’, will act as a further incentive for law firms to take cases themselves and will also act as an incentive for providers looking to offer cheap legal services. ‘It is not in the public interest or what the majority of solicitors want,’ he said.
Turner became president of the ABA this month, replacing Max Hill QC. He practises from London’s Garden Court Chambers, specialising in complex crime.
Turner predicted that many hard-working and good solicitors will either be swallowed up by ‘Tesco law’-style suppliers or will disappear altogether, and that the impact of the changes could lead to the ‘virtual extinction’ of criminal solicitors and barristers within five years.
Barristers and solicitors are naturally concerned about the cuts and are both ‘rushing for the lifeboats’ in an attempt to preserve their positions, he said. ‘The message I’d like to convey to the Law Society is that the bar and solicitors should, in the public interest, be standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm.’
Comments
You're wrong.
Sir. You are as naive as your predecessors. "One case one fee" is precisely what solicitors want, if the "one case two fees" presently arranged cannot continue. You cannot stand shoulder to shoulder with the man who holds the whip.
The bars zealous desire for
The bars zealous desire for the ridiculous QASA scheme as a whizz to try and get solicitors out of the advocacy market really doesn't demonstrate that the bar want unitary between the professions (except when it suits of course)
Untrained
The reason why there is one case, two fees is because barristers are good at their job. Solicitors have not undertaken the BVC/BPTC or pupillage and are consequently not worthy of representing clients in court. Moreover, it is not in the public interest to essentially force the client to receive substandard representation, and from experience, I have not witnessed a single solicitor advocate perform well.
If solicitors wish to do the work of a barrister, they should undertake exactly the same training barristers are required to undertake.
Untrained by Anon, get out of
Untrained by Anon, get out of the fifties. Have you seen the standard of advocacy amongst members of the junior bar?. The training of which you speak is also a nonsense, I, as a former HCA transferred to the bar 3 years ago. Exempted from pupillage, exempted from advocacy training, never had to do BVC I was welcomed into the Bar with open arms by literally just signing a form. There are many like me. Not only places the training arrangements for barristers into perspective also makes you think what is the point of maintaining the fallacy of a split profession.
OCOF/BVT
It's not as though competitive tendering (including one or both of OCOF/BVT) is coming as a surprise to either solicitors or barristers. Had Ken Clark not bottled out last December we'd be doing it now. The difference is that solicitors can easily move to the new regime; having been tendering for legal aid work for many years and will welcome OCOF. Why wouldn't they - they'll get the money.
On the other hand, and with the same amount of notice, the Bar, with the exception of the fatally-flawed but otherwise a good idea, 'Procureco' proposals, have done nothing to prepare for the inevitable day. Such is the level of their unpreparedness that, even if they started now, they won't have the required infrastructure installed, culture changes embedded and management organised even to bid for a contract within a 24 month period at the earliest. It's going to take more than 'standoing shoulder to shoulder' to save most of the criminal Bar from being a minor part of the supply chain for advocacy.
OCOF/BVT
The only solicitors who want BVT are the large outfits who will get the contracts. Naturally, this will only increase the recruitment of HCA's. The rest of us (solicitors) face annihilation.
OCOF may cause a little delay, but remember the Solicitors Accounts Rules require payment out of disbursements received within 13 days of receipt (unless transferred to client account) so the Bar should not have the kind of problem it is envisaging.
Although arguably if the
Although arguably if the barrister is being instructed as an advocacy agency, then it isn't a disbursement, it is a business expense.