Bar under fire over service to solicitors

Half of practising solicitors have at some time been so dissatisfied with the service provided by barristers that they have been compelled to complain, according to research conducted for the Bar Council.

The survey, which polled more than 260 solicitors in England and Wales and was released at the Bar's annual conference at the weekend in London, painted a grim picture for the junior end of the barristers' profession.

The vast majority of solicitors across the spectrum of work areas said they had begun to reduce their reliance on junior barristers in favour of more senior juniors and silks.

Solicitors also said they were using the Bar as a whole less and more selectively.

The researchers, Hildebrandt International, found that 56% of solicitors had at some time 'felt the need to complain about counsel's service'.

Some 49% of those surveyed went on to make some form of complaint.

And about a quarter of those who complained were were dissatisfied with the manner in which the complaint was handled.

Solicitors said they were increasingly monitoring the performance of barristers.

Some 85% of respondents said they had either formal or informal procedures in place.

Formal monitoring took the form of individual appraisal, in-house meetings, end-of-case reports and central logging.

There were several areas of barrister service that were highlighted by solicitors as poor, including weak procedures generally, the late return of briefs, double-booking or switching counsel, fee rates

and the clerk's role as intermediary between solicitors and barristers.The Bar Council chairman, Jonathan Hirst QC, said barristers could 'always do better' but on balance he was pleased with the results of the survey regarding the quality of service to solicitors.

'If you instruct the Bar regularly you will be jolly lucky if you are not going to be unhappy occasionally,' he said.

Most solicitors said they still instruct a mix of barristers based on seniority, but there are significant signs of a shift away from the junior bar.

Twice as many solicitors said they had moved recently to instructing more senior barristers than those who said they had maintained their balance between instructing seniors and juniors.

More than 80% expected that trend to continue.

Some 35% of solicitors expected their firms' reliance on the Bar to decline in future, with the increasing use of solicitor advocates being cited as the most common cause of this.The results were not all bad for the Bar.

There was high satisfaction with the skill and knowledge of counsel generally, with 95% of solicitors describing it as good or very good.There was also wide backing for the retention of an independent Bar, with about 70% of respondents saying they supported it strongly.

Speaking at the conference, two leading solicitors warned barristers to pay heed to the survey results.

Stephen Pollard, a partner at London-based Kingsley Napley, advised barristers to become full players in a client's legal team.

Likewise, John Heaps, national head of litigation at Eversheds, said the Bar too often relied on the term 'independence' as a way of 'shielding barristers from the full rigor and glare of client attention that solicitors have to face every day'.

A Law Society spokeswoman said the survey 'shows that barristers as well as solicitors have to put client care at the top of their agenda and provide a quality service at a reasonable fee'.