'The ability of citizens advice bureaux to refer appropriate work directly to barristers would enable the Bar to play a positive role in making access to justice more widely available at less cost, without at the same time undermining the essential referral nature of the profession.

It would also provide work for the young Bar, who themselves are vital to the successful future of the Bar.'So begins a proposal drafted by Hilary Heilbron QC, chairman of the Bar's strategy and policy committee, for direct access from CABx to barristers.

The proposal was approved in principle by the Bar Council last month.Roger Smith, director of the Legal Action Group, views the Bar's move as a threat to solicitors.

'In the short term this feeds concern about the Bar trying to marginalise solicitors,' said Mr Smith.

'Generally, I am in favour of open rights of access and of audience.

What is going to happen, and what we should be trying to facilitate, is effectively the creation of one profession.

That profession will contain specialist referral advocates, but the number will be much less than the current number of barristers.'Whatever form the legal profession of the future takes, there is no doubt that work referred by CABx will continue to account for a sizeable chunk of many solicitors' practices.

Ms Heilbron's paper suggests the current figure is about 14%.

That figure would be significantly higher for some high street firms.It is also clear that there is a consensus on both sides of the House of Commons that advice agencies should have a greater role in the provision of legal services.

A pilot scheme is under way to franchise CABx and boost their often meagre local authority funding with chunks of legal aid money.However, the CABx have only recently begun to consider the merits of the Bar's scheme.

John Philo, policy officer at the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NACAB), said he had only just received the Bar's final proposals.

'It is at an early stage and all very hypothetical at the moment.

Whatever changes are made should not prejudice the existing pro bono help we get from barristers and solicitors,' he said.Mr Philo's other concerns centred on whether CAB procedures should be changed to allow them to charge clients (and pass on to barristers their fees), and to ensure CAB caseworkers had received the necessary training to enable them to instruct the Bar directly.Mr Philo said NACAB was interested in the 'broad principles' behind the direct access scheme.

He added that although only around 20 CABx employed solicitors as part of their permanent staff, this had grown by a factor of four since 1993.Walton-on-Thames solicitor Greg McCarthy, whose firm McCarthy Robertson works closely with several Surrey CABx, said he had detected no grassroots groundswell of opinion from the CAB workers he had asked in favour of direct access to the Bar.CAB advisers said they had 'plenty to do and no time to think about it,' he reported.

'They are not terribly interested.

At the moment they have no great problem in getting hold of legal help when they need it.

If there is a message for solicitors it is "keep in touch with their local CAB".'A spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Practitioners Group commented: 'Half of me thinks "right, let them try." The other half of me thinks "Oh my God."' However, she had few doubts about the practicality of the scheme.

'I think it is a non-starter.

I don't think CABx have the ability to tackle the Bar direct.

It is not like ringing your friendly local solicitor and getting ten minutes of free advice down the phone.

The way CABx work is much less structured and professional than the way solicitors work.

For them to start instructing counsel and preparing all the information that goes with it would require vast amounts of extra paperwork and the need to keep very good records.'She cited a leaked internal report prepared for NACAB by the Central London Law Centre which concluded that nearly 40% of CABx advice fell below NACAB's standards.Albert Venables is a former CAB worker who now works for solicitors' firm Nelson, Johnson & Hastings in Nottingham, although he is not a solicitor.

'I don't know how often I would have wanted to use a barrister if direct access had been allowed,' he said.

It was more likely to be on a specialised basis, for example, when appealing against tribunal decisions, that barristers were really useful, he suggested.'CABx deal with a really heavy volume of cases, but because of problems with funding, the kind of work they can do at a specialised level is limited,' Mr Venables added.Karen MacKay, a Law Society professional policy executive, said that at a time when the delivery of legal services was changing, 'piecemeal responses from the Bar based on anxiety about future changes' were not helpful.

'All of the providers -- CABx, law centres, barristers and solicitors -- need to sit down together, once we know what the changes are likely to be, and sort out how we can preserve and improve services to clients,' she said.A Bar spokesman said the direct access scheme was not designed to be 'predatory' as far as solicitors were concerned, but to 'adopt and capitalize on new opportunities'.'What the Bar is aiming to do is remove one of its own restrictive practices to enable CAB caseworkers to instruct barristers on a referral basis,' he said.

'I am sure legislators of all parties are keen to hear from the Law Society on how to develop a truly effective role for advice agencies.'