As the new Chairman o the Bar Council, Geoffrey Vos is determined to change the public perception of barristers. Catherine Baksi finds out more.


He represented The Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps, in its legal battle with Apple Computers, successfully defended Virgin Radio in an unfair dismissal action brought by DJ Chris Evans, and – alongside an impressive £2 million Chancery practice – has, for the past year, tirelessly led the Bar Council’s Carter response group. But, as its new chairman, Geoffrey Vos QC could be facing his most difficult and high-profile role yet.



Sitting in his spacious room in the tranquil surroundings of his Lincoln’s Inn chambers, the diminutive Mr Vos shares his hopes for the future of his profession.



‘The bar is at a very exciting stage of its development – it’s ready to redefine itself as a profession of specialist advocates who offer the highest-quality service,’ he asserts.



‘I think perhaps we haven’t seen it quite that way before, and I have something of a vision for the future – where the bar is not fighting for survival, nor trying all the time to justify its existence, but is perceived as offering a high-quality service that no one can match.’



But there are provisos. ‘We have to take the right decisions about the way we regulate ourselves, about the quality of the service we provide and about entry to the profession,’ he says. ‘If we can achieve that, then we will have achieved a lot, because then we will have a rationale for existence very firmly ensconced in people’s minds.’



Changing the public’s perception of the bar is a torch he carries forward from his predecessor, Stephen Hockman QC. ‘The bar has had an image problem since the 1970s, when I joined it – and probably before – but I think that its image is increasingly unfair and ill-informed,’ he suggests.



‘We have a very good intake from diverse racial groups, and almost equal numbers of men and women joining the profession. However, the problem we still have is that we have tended to attract more people from the higher socio-economic groups.’



The bar, he says, is always going to be seen as elitist in the sense of producing excellence in its work, but that should not be confused with being exclusive in the sense of coming from one social background. ‘We need to make sure there are no barriers to entry, and that the most able from the whole spectrum of society can join the profession. And that is not totally the case at the moment.’



He says the expense of student top-up fees and the bar vocational course – without the guarantee of pupillage or tenancy – is creating barriers. That is why the Bar Council has charged Lord Justice Neuberger to look at how funding mechanisms can be made available to ensure those from less-privileged social backgrounds are not excluded.



Mr Vos – the product of a middle-class upbringing, a private education and Cambridge University – is realistic about the scale of his task. ‘Public ideas about the profession tend to be somewhat rigidly set and I’m not suggesting that we’re going to be able to change that overnight. The most important thing is to change the reality. Once that is as it should be, then a change in perception will naturally follow, provided we explain what’s really happening.’



Quality of service is the other key message Mr Vos wants to convey to the public, as well as the profession. ‘We trade on excellence and, without excellence, we can never succeed,’ he says forcefully. But he accepts there are incidences of poor performance. ‘Such reports are not particularly common, but they do exist and it’s no good just allowing them to fester.’



He proposes three measures to tackle this: compulsory advocacy training for advocates of four to six years’ call; a quality-assurance scheme under which advocates will be graded according to their seniority; and the introduction of a bar quality review board, which judges, solicitors and lay clients will be able to inform about poorly performing barristers. The board will not involve itself in compensation or disciplinary proceedings, but will advise a barrister on how to improve.



The issue of regulation is one that has taxed the considerable brain of the learned Mr Vos in his role as vice-chairman over the past year, and it is not one he intends to give up on now. ‘I think we’ve succeeded in making the case to regulate ourselves. We are now at the implementation stage and the [Legal Services Bill] is something we can broadly support, although there are two or three things that need further attention.’



Highlighting what he says is the Bar Council’s good performance in complaints-handling, the chairman reiterates the bar’s long-standing call for the Bill to allow the office of legal complaints to delegate the handling of service complaints back to the frontline regulator if it merits such delegation. The government has thus far shown no sign of giving way on this point, arguing that to allow complaints against barristers to be handled differently would undermine the whole point of the office.



When it comes to the proposed oversight regulator, the legal services board, Mr Vos maintains that the thresholds allowing it to intervene in the day-to-day work of frontline regulators are set too low, and the draft legislation should be amended to lay down the light-touch regulation recommended by Sir David Clementi.



His third gripe concerns the cost of the new proposals. ‘We think the government should have listened to the report of the joint committee of both Houses of Parliament, which suggested it look again at how the new regulatory structures were going to be financed, and whether it was appropriate for the government to make some contribution.’



What does Mr Vos make of the concept of alternative business structures (ABSs), which could see barristers going into partnership not only with solicitors and other forms of lawyer, but non-lawyers – as owners and/or fellow professionals – too? ‘There is work to be done on the detail of that, and we want to make sure that ABSs work in the public interest and allow the legal profession to sell its services overseas in an appropriate way,’ he says.



Mr Vos maintains that there will always be a need for the vast majority of the bar to be a self-employed profession for competition reasons – indeed, he says all advocates should initially qualify as barristers. He continues: ‘I don’t think we will be encouraging barristers to go into ABSs, but if they wish, for good commercial reasons, to do so, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t offer to regulate them [as individuals within ABSs, rather than seeking to be a full ABS regulator].’



Before becoming chairman, Mr Vos also devoted many hours to considering the proposals made by Lord Carter to solve the crisis over the government’s empty legal aid pot. How does he think the bar did? ‘We made a case that there was a need for redistribution from the top end of the profession to those doing smaller, shorter cases. That rebalance was achieved, and it was long overdue,’ he argues.



He has some sympathy for solicitors: ‘We are extremely concerned that the regime designed for the payment of legal aid solicitors in civil, criminal and family work should be fair and enable solicitors doing that kind of work to flourish. If they don’t, it would be a disaster for the availability of legal services.’ He is also concerned that the proposals for the litigators’ graduated-fee scheme that will apply to solicitors should be equitable, but says that is not something the bar has looked at in detail.



‘The difference between us and solicitors is that we moved to graduated fees in criminal work ten years ago, and so we have grown used to that kind of environment. It is a completely different structure and it is, admittedly, painful when you have to change.’



Despite his concerns, he says he would not be in favour of a delay in implementing the revised advocacy graduated-fee scheme for barristers until the litigator fees are considered further. ‘We’ve waited ten years with no increase in fees, and the profession, particularly at the most junior end, simply can’t afford to take a further cut.’



Every Bar Council chairman of recent years has faced a challenging in-tray. But Mr Vos is at the helm for the period when decisions will be taken on legal aid and regulation that will shape the profession for a generation or more. Away from the law, Mr Vos’s two great passions are his farm in the Malvern Hills and his wine cellar – during the next year, he may not see much of the former, but could be in great need of the latter.