On the Small Claims issue:-
Any person may exercise rights of audience in proceedings dealt with as a small claim in accordance with rules of court; but a lay representative may not exercise any right of audience where his client does not attend the hearing, at any stage after judgment, or on any appeal brought against any decision made by the district judge in the proceedings (The Lay Representatives (Right of Audience) Order 1999, SI 1999/1225, art 3(1)).

On the one hand the Bar Council are right. Too many "agents" or "advocates" etc represent either litigants in person or debt collection agencies. In such cases the agents obviously act without adequate supervision, training, duty to the court or liability if anything goes wrong.

Indeed I am currently acting for a client who is suing one of these outfits, a non-legally authorised body who apparently act as experts in evictions for landlords and letting agencies, which they do by issuing the possession claims (online, pretending to be the client), photocopying a specimen signature of the client onto court forms where necessary and instructing unqualified agents to represent at the hearing.

On the other hand, when I deal with out of town litigation, I almost always use agents. [The excellent Keith Jeffreys solicitor from Swansea beats all the other agencies hands down BTW].

If we have a criminal matter in a magistrates somewhere, you will get a junior counsel for a reasonable fee, commensurate with what you are asking them to do. Most chambers will have someone who will do it for £100 to £250 plus VAT for hearings such as pleas, etc.

But if you have the civil equivalent, the clerks just seem to think they've struck gold. "Oh well, sir, Mr XYZ has looked over the papers (all 10 pages of them) and it will take about half a days' prep, three hours travel and waiting and 30 minutes for the Allocation Hearing itself, so it will be £950 plus VAT."

Or we can use an agent who will charge an order of magnitude less than that.

And they wonder why nobody instructs them. It shows too in terms of experience. Whenever I deal with an opponent from the junior bar on some sort of low level interim application, or summary judgment, strike out, specific disclosure whatever, the lack of their experience is obvious. Most of them treat it like it is an Inns of Court mooting competition, reciting hundreds of paragraphs of procedural drivel and spending minute after minute boring the DJ reading the White Book out verbatim.

I was under the impression that the court can give anyone permission to address it. I, as a solicitor, appeared before two High Court judges (Maurice Drake J and Tasker Watkins J - both 24 ct gentlemen) to save my clients, who'd won late on Friday having to pay/risk recovering a refresher and to release counsel on Monday when they were to be told why. "I'm sure your instructing solicitor can apply for his costs." said with a smile.

What seem to be needed here is for the CPR to be clarified or amended.

This is as clear a case of a monopoly seeking to preserve its privileges under the guise of public interest as I've seen.

The reason that I and others use LPC (in my case) is that they do a damn good job at a far more reasonable cost than employing m'learned friend.

The days of easy money in litigation (or at least the sort of everyday litigation that I deal with, sadly not involving Russian oligarchs) have gone for good. As solicitors we have had to take a hit, but learned counsel seem to think that they should somehow be immune.

When they finally wake up to reality and offer services at a reasonable price I'll be happy to instruct them. But until then they can whinge all they like; I'll continue using agents.

I agree that the interpretation of the Bar Council appears to be very narrow. Indeed, many agents have appeared in public hearings having been given leave to do so by the judge. There are also cases where matters that should be heard in private or in chambers, whichever you like, are heard in open court because the judge feels like it. The lack of consistency certainly puts everyone on notice that they need to be diligent.

The self-employed bar ought to be shooting at bigger targets in my view.