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My reading of the current "outcomes focussed" rules is that so long as your client understands what you are charging and why, that is fine. What you pay third party suppliers, or sub-contractors, is between you and them.

If Counsel is being briefed as part of the legal team to exercise rights of audience, etc., then I think you would have to charge as professional disbursement Counsel's fees alone. Anything else would be a "secret profit" which you can't do as you are in a fiduciary relationship.

On the other hand, if Counsel is being instructed to do a Mags / County Court trial as a discrete item of work, which you could and maybe would do yourself, they are surely no different to a solicitors' agent (or even a locum employee - as the BSB points out). They are only being instructed to save yourself the hassle of travelling and being out of the office.

I am not saying I agree with it, but that is my reading of the rules.

We're not supposed to be professionals anymore anyway, with fiduciary obligations, etc. We're supposed to be exciting super ABS business offering innovative "solutions" to enhance "customer-seeking desires" and enabling effective "hot-tubbing" in a North-shored Thought Jacuzzi.

So M'Learned friends had better get with the programme...

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