Solicitors with higher rights of audience could be admitted to the exclusive Inns of Court for the first time in centuries under proposals going to the Bar Council this week.The proposal follows a review of the future of the Inns by a panel of senior judges and barristers.

In what the panel admits could prove to be a controversial proposal, solicitors with higher rights of audience could be invited to join an Inn for a suggested fee of 1,000.

The current fee for barristers to join an Inn is 85.Solicitors would remain employed with firms but would be entitled enjoy the Inn's 'collegiate' life, which includes education, training and formal dining.

However, solicitors aiming to gain higher rights would not be entitled to apply for scholarships.

At present there are around 1,000 solicitor-advocates with higher rights of audience in England and Wales.The panel rejected a number of counter arguments when making its proposal: that the Inns would be swamped by the numbers of solicitors seeking to join; that it would discourage those now choosing to be barristers; and that it would hasten fusion of the two professions.To reject the proposal would risk the Inns being seen as exclusionary, the report said.

On the other hand, accepting solicitor-advocates would maintain and set standards in advocacy, and help continue the Inns' important role in the administration of justice.Panel chairman, Court of Appeal judge Sir Murray Stuart-Smith, said it would be 'wholly wrong' to see the proposal as a move towards fusion of the two professions.

He added: 'I hope this will be seen as an imaginative and far-sighted report.'Law Society President Robert Sayer said the report showed that the barriers between the two professions were crumbling.

'The real question is whether we really need two professions, and I don't think we do,' he said.Mark Humphries, chairman of the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates and partner at City firm Linklaters, which recently announced it was taking advocacy in-house (see [2000] Gazette, 30 March, 1), said the report showed that the Inns are accepting that advocates are not just barristers.

Sue Allen