Rights of Audience
A Response to the Lord Chancellor's Paper of June 1998
by the North Eastern Circuit
General
the Paper ignores totally the mass of evidence gathered over many years by all previous investigations into this subject. It appears from the Paper that life did not exist before the 1990 Act;
the terminology of the Paper makes very clear that the Government has already formed entrenched ideas about rights of audience and will have no truck with any views to the contrary.
Solicitor Advocates in the Crown Court
We are astonished that no-one in Government seems in the least interested to discover how Solicitor Advocates put their new rights into practice - particularly in the Crown Courts in crime. There are serious costs implications in continuing to permit Solicitor Advocates to exercise rights of audience in the Higher Courts.
Comparative costs of Barrister -v- Solicitor
The old argument that it is better to have one lawyer instead of two is demonstrably blown out of the water by what occurs in reality in the Criminal Courts. Let us not forget that the purpose of the original legislation was to allow a Solicitor to see a case through from first to last so that there would be continuity for the client (who, so the argument went, would not be forced to see his Solicitor having to hand the case over to a Barrister simply because the Solicitor could not present the case in the Crown Court - the hackneyed old argument "why use two lawyers when one would do?" or "I want my Solicitor to represent me because he knows my case best"). Part of the stated reasoning for extension of rights of audience was that this continuity of representation would not only be user-friendly but would also be cost effective because one Solicitor Advocate following the case through from first to last would cost less than a case which required the services of a Solicitor plus a Barrister.
In practice, Solicitors have discovered that the newly acquired advocacy rights are a source of rich pickings from public funds if the original concept (above) is turned on its head. What now happens in criminal cases is that the Solicitor Advocate usually plays no part whatever in the proceedings before the case reaches the Crown Court (unless the case has media value and consequent publicity benefits). He will not be involved in the procedure before charge (interviews, etc) and will not take part in the Magistrates Court proceedings. Other members of his firm will do that work. The Solicitor Advocate then conducts the Crown Court case behaving (save in terms of experience and competence) exactly as a Barrister would behave and even using a clerk from his firm to do the tasks which the clerk would have performed for the Barrister under the previous system. In reality therefore nothing has changed save that the lay client still has two lawyers, the public purse still pays out as before (although in many instances it pays out more to the Solicitor Advocate on hourly rates than is paid to the Barrister for identical work) and the Court and the client receive an inferior service. In many cases we have seen a Solicitors Firm actually preparing a brief for their own Solicitor Advocate! Surely this cannot be acceptable? In our experience only very small Firms which happen to have a Solicitor Advocate adhere to the original intention of the legislation. These unnecessary and superfluous costs which were never contemplated as a consequence of the extension of rights of audience (although this Circuit predicted during the consultation period leading up to the 1990 legislation that Solicitors would behave in this way) are clear proof of the manner in which the new system is manipulated by Solicitor Advocates to their own cost advantage:
Unnecessary expense
Solicitor Advocates are regularly seen attending the Crown Court accompanied by a totally unnecessary Solicitor’s clerk and claiming fees which put counsel's fees in the shade - the reality is that the Public is still paying for two lawyers but the money (and an increased amount) is going into the pocket of one firm of Solicitors. We challenge the Lord Chancellor to produce the figures for payments to Solicitor Advocates for all Crown Court work including (but itemising) advocacy - It is guaranteed that those figures will show that the public purse is paying substantially more than is necessary for Solicitors to exercise rights of audience. In any case in which a Solicitor Advocate is involved, a comparison of that Solicitor’s firm’s total costs and fees with those charged when a Barrister is briefed will demonstrate that the Solicitor’s firm is always more expensive to the public purse. The Lord Chancellor has these figures within the statistics produced by the Court Service which prove what we at the Bar see happening in practice.
Particular examples of how Solicitor Advocates cost more
Example 1 A Solicitor Advocate being led by a Silk.
This is currently the most popular area of work for Solicitor Advocates for obvious reasons. The Solicitor Advocate should in theory do the work a Junior Counsel would do. The reality is usually this. The work he should do is instead done by another Solicitor or by an Articled Clerk in the firm (or is not done at all leaving the Leader to do it). The Solicitor Advocate normally has not been involved in the case pre-trial. The excuse offered is that the Solicitor Advocate must distance himself from the client and from the preliminary procedures in order to preserve his "independence" thereby emulating the role of a Barrister. The Solicitor Advocate merely turns up at trial (and, perhaps, at any consultation) and collects his half basic fee and refreshers (or his hourly rate in non-graduated fee cases) expecting to do little during the trial. Indeed our experience is that the thought or suggestion that the Solicitor Advocate should actually conduct a part of the trial is a cause of panic. The mischief is that, meanwhile, the Solicitor or Articled Clerk in the firm who has done the work pre-trial which the Solicitor Advocate should have done is able to and does bill the legal aid fund separately for work which should be encompassed by the basic fee of the Solicitor Advocate who should himself have done the work as part of his basic fee. Furthermore, the Solicitor Advocate is usually so inexperienced (one Solicitor Advocate recently remarked in a murder case that the experience was just like pupillage because it enabled him to learn how the job should be done) that no responsible Silk can properly countenance a Solicitor being left unsupervised to carry out the work which a Junior should and would normally do, namely to advise on evidence, to draft skeleton arguments, to prepare admissibility schedules, to cross examine or call some witnesses or to draft grounds of appeal. The Silk will invariably himself feel obliged to carry out such work ordinarily done by the Junior in the case in order that the lay client should have a fair trial and to avoid the disasters which are likely to be caused by Solicitor Advocates taking on tasks beyond their abilities when they are in fact and expect to be mere note-takers. The cases in which this practice occurs are cases which properly require the services of two counsel but in which the Silk carries more than his fair share of the burden of the case but without commensurate remuneration.
It is surely wrong in principle that a Solicitor Advocate should put himself into serious cases with so little experience and competence in the Crown Court. There is no proper learning curve and experience in the lower Courts does not equip the Solicitor Advocate for the rigours and high standards of presentation required in the Crown Court.
The ultimate irony is that, in ex post facto determinations (cases falling within Schedule 3 Part 1 paragraphs 2 (2) to (5)of the Legal Aid in Criminal and Care Proceedings (Costs) (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 1996 - the Graduated Fees legislation), the Solicitor Advocate will receive fees in excess of those paid to the Silk rather than normal Junior Barrister’s fees of half of the fees paid to the Silk.
The above proposition is demonstrated and proved by the following typical case of an ex post facto determination :
Silk’s normal refresher fee : £425.00 (this includes all travelling, waiting, preparation, time in Court, consultation time etc).
Solicitor Advocate (Grade A Fee earner) being led by the Silk will receive for that same day the following: £645.00 (This is £64.50 per hour with a 100% uplift for Grade A fee earner for 5 hours in Court).
In addition he will receive at different hourly rates his travel, waiting and consultation time which is likely to add a further substantial sum to his daily remuneration.
The net result is that the Solicitor Advocate will receive approximately twice the fees of the Silk.
The same considerations apply to the pre-trial preparation work (if any) done by the Solicitor Advocate. The result is a topsy-turvy world in which the "token" Junior is paid a vast amount of public money for doing nothing.
We are very annoyed that this Government seems so intent upon destroying the Bar without just cause that it is prepared to ignore abuses of this kind.
Example 2 The Solicitor Advocate conducting a case without a Silk.
Here in practice the assigned Solicitors Firm may instruct a Solicitor Advocate from another Firm or from a grouping of Solicitor Advocates (these are springing up particularly in London) or a sole practitioner Solicitor Advocate holding himself out as a "hired gun" advocate. This system is similar to using a barrister but without the controls provided by the Bar’s Code of Practice. There is obviously no cost saving to the public purse. In certain cases (as illustrated above) the cost is greater than that charged by a Barrister.
Alternatively, if the case is kept in-house, the Solicitor’s firm adopts the same system. The Solicitor Advocate often has nothing to do with the case until it reaches the Crown Court hearing. Another member of the firm will do all preparatory work (often the work is peremptory or is unnecessary). Again there is no saving to the legal aid fund. On the contrary, the legal aid fund pays out far more than is necessary and far more than if a Barrister had been used.
Another interesting feature is that some firms will still send a Solicitor’s clerk to accompany the Solicitor Advocate at court. Such a person should strictly be totally unnecessary. However remuneration is claimed and obtained for that attendance. Again not only no saving to the Legal Aid Fund but instead an unnecessary additional cost.
Example of the stark reality in practice
A classic example of a case in which the Solicitor Advocate is to be expected to conduct the case in the Crown Court is the recently devised "Plea before Venue" scheme in which the Defendant indicates his plea in the Magistrates Court and, if serious enough, the case is committed to the Crown Court for sentence. This is classically a case for the attendance at the Crown Court of the Solicitor Advocate in order to see the case through to its conclusion (as the single lawyer!) and to ensure that the Crown Court is fully aware of the basis of the guilty plea. On the contrary, the Solicitor Advocate rarely enters the Crown Court, preferring instead to brief very Junior Counsel for the Crown Court appearance (that counsel then has to explain the basis of the plea which is often entered for reasons of expedience and is frequently unsupported by the evidence). The reader may enquire why the Solicitor Advocate does not exercise his rights of audience in the Crown Court? The answer is simple and typifies the fee-conscious attitude which prevails amongst many Solicitors: the fee for a Committal for Sentence from a Plea before Venue is the derisory sum of £73.50.
Not only does this example demonstrate that the extension of rights of audience brings with it an undesirable diminution of the ethical standards which hitherto Barristers have maintained in the Higher Courts but it also shows how necessary and cost effective the Bar actually is.
The additional cost to the country of these methods is not yet as significant as it will become if rights of audience are taken up in greater volume. Also, the whole argument in favour of the present system is defeated by the increased cost of using a Solicitor Advocate in the above circumstances. The more we Barristers see of Criminal Solicitors running up enormous unjustified hours of preparation, attending numerous totally unnecessary "hand-holding" conferences in prisons held merely to stop the prisoner from being poached by another firm offering inducements to encourage the prisoner to have the legal aid order transferred and numerous other costly and spurious practices, the more we despair that the generally cost-effective Bar is being squeezed out of the Crown Court for no justifiable reason.
The Junior Bar is already beginning to suffer the outrageous effects of the "Plea before Venue" scheme which undermined the graduated guilty plea fee by transforming it at the stroke of a pen into a committal for sentence (usually with exactly the same documentation and workload for counsel as before - indeed it is often said by the young Bar that the task in such cases is more difficult than before because they have to pick up the pieces of the wreckage created in the lower Court when the plea was indicated). Young barristers are already suffering financial hardship as a result of yet another attack upon a conscientious and hard working profession. Instead of preserving a quality service, the Government seems to be intent upon filling the pockets of Solicitors with public money and destroying the cost efficient and truly independent Bar.
Quality
One might be forgiven for thinking that quality is irrelevant to the Lord Chancellor. The difference in standards and quality of preparation and presentation of a case as between Solicitors (employed and private) in the Magistrates Court and Counsel in the Crown Court is a gulf of enormous proportions. We wonder whether the Lord Chancellor has appreciated that justice and the lower courts are uncomfortable bedfellows? In just a day or two in the Magistrates Court witnessing Solicitors missing points of law, failing to object to inadmissible evidence and demonstrating under-prepared cross examination, hearing Defendants plead guilty in the absence of evidence, seeing the fees which Solicitors receive for this service and generally seeing a low quality high cost legal system failing to deliver should provide a salutary lesson. These Magistrates Court standards are now being imported into the Crown Court by Solicitor Advocates who manage to pass the qualification tests (and surely the low pass rate achieved by Solicitors in particular in the criminal tests demonstrates how poorly equipped for the Crown Court these Solicitor Advocates really are!). Judges seem fearful of criticising Solicitor Advocates and/or of expressing their true opinion that these advocates are, with a few exceptions, of very inferior quality because they do not wish to appear to be siding with the Bar. Some Solicitor Advocates only enter the Crown Court in order to be led by a Silk! For them it is an easy ride with a good reward. In short, many Solicitor Advocates are exercising their new rights for the wrong reasons. Their professional standards fall short of the standards of the Bar and their presence in the Crown Court is undermining the justice system. No Barrister would countenance the unnecessary expenditure of Legal Aid monies on avoidable costs. We regret to say that some Solicitors are prepared to do so if it helps to increase their client satisfaction. The Government should look closely at claims for witness expenses, at whether there is duplication of payment for work normally expected to be done by the Solicitor Advocate and encompassed by his graduated or ex post facto fee, at the actual work done in the course of a prison conference by the Solicitor/Articled Clerk, at the payments claimed for attendances at Court by Solicitor’s clerks with a Solicitor Advocate and in effect at every aspect of claims for costs by Solicitors Firms.
The fact that Solicitors do not operate a cab rank principle is also a source of problems. There are many examples of Solicitor Advocates "returning" contested cases to counsel at very short notice for inadequate reasons.
Choice
It is fatuous also to suggest that, by extending rights of audience to Solicitors the public is being given a wider choice of advocate. What on earth does the ordinary member of the public know of the quality of the service he is being offered? How does he know whether his Solicitor Advocate is acting in his best interests? Those of us who do Legal Aid work know that the public generally thinks that the lawyer who shouts the loudest is the best. He is also probably the most expensive and wastes the most court time and costs the country the most in Legal Aid.
Concerns over the rights to conduct litigation
We are astonished that the Consultation Paper states that the right to "conduct litigation" has not caused concern. In our view this is the area where the most abuse occurs. Solicitors on hourly rates claim vast sums for their work. Solicitors' bills always exceed those of the Bar. Legal Aid Franchising is risible. Quality control is non existent.
Should we turn a blind eye to the short and long term adverse effects on public confidence in the legal system which the proposed changes and the changes already made will bring about?
Specific Comments on the Paper
Introduction
Para 1. 6 The key word is "choice" '. The reality is that extending rights of audience to Solicitors limits choice. The litigant is stuck with the Solicitor who conducts his case from the beginning or with an Advocate from that Solicitor's firm. He therefore does not have access to the wider field of choice provided by the considerable body of Advocates provided by the Bar. Also the litigant does not have access to the independent and impartial view of someone who is not influenced into partiality from the outset by close involvement with the litigant. Time and time again we at the independent Bar see cases in which the litigant and the Solicitor have blinded themselves to some important matter which affects the prospects of likely outcome of the case in a significant way.
Furthermore, at present Solicitors demonstrate an inability (when unguided) to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of different counsel. How much more handicapped will they be when assessing their own talents?
Similarly with the employed Bar. We do think that Solicitors in employment are (often unwittingly) partial. Their arguments to the contrary are well known. Their obligation to the paymaster is an intrinsic though often subconscious influence on decision-making.
Para 1.11 To accuse the Bar of "retaining an effective monopoly" is an exceptionally naive view of what has happened since 1990. The fact is that the vast majority of Solicitors (the silent majority of the sensible members of the Law Society) do not want rights of audience. This majority of the Solicitors’ profession spoke out during the debate in the years before 1990 and said that they wanted to continue to use the independent Bar for the very reason that the Bar provides not only extensive choice but also provides an advocacy service which small firms of Solicitors cannot afford to provide "in-house". The reality is that the small firm can offer a better and wider range of advocacy services by using the Bar than the large firm with its own advocates - the latter limits the consumer's options. To say that "litigants ... have no effective choice other than to employ (the barristers') services" is the opposite of the truth. By employing the Bar, Solicitors are providing effective choice. If Solicitors were prepared to undergo the years of acclimatisation to the Higher Courts which the Bar acquires through years of gradually rising through the profession, one could accept the exercise of their rights. The real problem is the desire of the Solicitor Advocate to do the cases which are beyond his experience and competence simply on the grounds that he has knocked about in the lower Courts and passed the qualifying test rather than starting on the lower rungs of the Higher Courts and gradually working up the ladder of competence. In fact the sensible decision of most Solicitors not to seek rights of audience has been the factor which has prevented the "catastrophic" consequences of the 1990 Act and there has been no beneficial effect from the few Solicitors who have managed to qualify for the simple reason that there was never likely to be any benefit to the Public from the extension of the rights of audience.
The Government's Approach
Para 2.1 Again the spin of the Government approach is to accuse those Solicitors who choose to employ a Barrister of being "forced" to do so. This is simply not the case. Then comes the old chestnut of "having to pay for two lawyers where one might suffice". We have never understood this argument. The work of the advocate is separate from that of the litigator as the behaviour of Solicitor Advocates (supra) proves. The experience of the last 8 years has amply demonstrated that there is no cost saving in having a Solicitor Advocate (indeed there is a cost increase) and standards of advocacy have been driven down by the ingress of inadequately experienced Solicitor Advocates. To turn the Government's own argument against them, why should the public have to pay for a Solicitor Advocate to gain experience in Crown Court cases by starting with the simpler cases (which he surely should do) and why should the public have to suffer the Solicitor gaining his Crown Court experience by conducting serious cases (which he surely should not do)?
We do not see how extending rights of audience increases "competition between advocates". On the contrary, once a Solicitor's Firm has the conduct of a case and determines to use its own in-house advocate, there is no competition at all.
Para 2.2 It is amazing that the author of the Paper can only marshal 2 arguments in favour of retaining any restrictions on rights of audience. There are reasons too numerous to list in favour of retention of some controls (see above). This demonstrates the over-simplistic approach of this Paper.
Show us a litigant in person "exercising an important civil right" who does not, by conducting his own case, demonstrate how easily the court system could descend into chaos.
Para 2.6 What a classic piece of twisted logic this is. The point seems to be that one can transform a Solicitor who acts as an advocate in the lower courts into a Higher Court Advocate by raising the jurisdiction of the lower courts. This has been tried already in the field of education. Student pass levels are reduced in order that more students should qualify. Does this better qualify the student for a career or for life? No doubt it will next be said that because a Solicitor can now effectively conduct a very serious criminal case under the "Plea before Venue" scheme in the Magistrates Court and follow the case to the Crown Court if it is committed for sentence (as stated above an unlikely event if the fee for such a case remains at such a low level), he is therefore qualified to act in all Crown Court criminal cases. Has anyone in the Lord Chancellor’s Department actually witnessed the chaotic condition of these cases when they reach the Crown Court? We Barristers regularly have to sort out and solve at the Crown Court the problems caused by Solicitors who obtain the Defendant’s agreement to a Plea before Venue but who fail to appreciate the absence of evidence in support of the charge and the fact that the indicated "plea" is consistent only with innocence.
Para 2.7 The only thing which is not "rationally defensible" is the content of this paragraph. The arguments in favour of a separate corps of advocates are well known. Those arguments are set out in the many Bar Council responses to attacks such as these in the past.
Para 2.9 Crown Prosecution Service lawyers are indeed trusted to conduct cases in the Magistrates Court. That is said to be a reason to entrust them (and other employed lawyers) with cases in the Crown Court. Of course some Crown Prosecution Service lawyers are careful, competent and conscientious. We are astonished however at the naive implied suggestion that cases in the lower courts are conducted with universal independence. Has the author of this Paper ever tried to get primary disclosure out of a Crown Prosecutor in the Magistrates Court? Has he ever witnessed the pressure placed on the Crown Prosecutor by the Police and the effect on decision making of direct contact with the witnesses? Those features alone provide the answer to the suggested independence of the employed lawyer. Distance between Police and Advocate is essential and is the cornerstone of independence. Without the Bar, the last check on impartiality is removed. On this Circuit we already have a large file of cases which demonstrates on the part of the Crown Prosecution Service and the Police either a complete lack of understanding of the CP&IA or a complete inability to differentiate between evidence which may undermine the Crown case and evidence which may assist the Defence. We have many examples of cases of deliberate non-disclosure of crucial information and evidence which has only been disclosed when discovered by and at the behest of prosecuting counsel and which has had a material effect on the outcome of the case. We are prepared to make our file available to any interested party. It should be remembered that these are cases which come to light. We can only guess at the number of cases which pass through the system in which vital evidence never sees the light of day. The reader should remember that evidence will now be destroyed after a first unsuccessful appeal against conviction under the terms of the CP&IA. This Act puts the law back 30 years and ensures that, in the absence of the involvement of the independent Bar, there will be no comprehensive brake on non-disclosure of material evidence.
Para 2. 10 The arguments contained here are better deployed in establishing why preferred sets of chambers for Crown Prosecution Service work are a bad idea. Again in this Paper the London ethos rules - we are bound to wonder whether the author of this Paper has ever ventured north of Watford? On this Circuit, Barristers run mixed practices in order to provide a wide range of advocacy services. Some specialise. Most spend their careers servicing small firms around the area by providing advocacy at reasonable cost. The Consultation Paper now argues that a lawyer is more likely to be independent if he is in employment! This proposition is dumbfounding. How can a person be more independent if his horizons are limited by the boundaries of his employment?
Para 2. 11 It is disturbing that the Consultation Paper once again wheels out the now wholly discredited evidence of the DPP to the Public Accounts Committee. The Crown Prosecution Service now accepts that the figures were misleading. We say that they were deliberately misleading and wholly false. (A copy of the North Eastern Circuit Paper on Crown Prosecution Service Returns is annexed hereto marked Annex A). It is to be remembered that the Crown Prosecution Service by its briefing policy (and in particular failing to ascertain the availability of counsel) often causes and then collaborates in the returning of cases, frequently fails to support the Counsel briefed in his efforts to arrange for the cases to be listed on a suitably convenient date so that the cases do not have to be returned and frankly does not really mind in most cases whether or not a case is returned since the majority of cases are allocated to Junior Counsel on a rota basis irrespective of the special skills of the briefed Barrister . We argue that the returns system operates to the advantage of everyone in most cases. Without it the Courts would grind to a halt. Further the Court Service is itself responsible for the rate of returns by the inflexible attitude to listing in which counsel's availability is at the bottom of the list of priorities. This is a case of creating a problem and then blaming the Bar for it.
Para 2.14 Once again the Consultation Paper seems to be written in ignorance of what occurs in practice. We do not understand the suggestion that there is nothing to stop an inexperienced junior leading a prosecution case straight out of pupillage. Is that a criticism of the Crown Prosecution Service? Baffling statements abound in this Paper. Also we see few Barristers choosing specialisation in either Prosecution or in Defence work. The Crown Prosecution Service itself creates unwanted specialisation by its "preferred sets" system. The point is that the Bar is available to act for anyone on either side. The "preferred sets" system attempts to limit the Bar’s ability so to act. We take the view that you cannot just spend "some" time as an advocate in the course of satisfying some need for "job mobility". Advocacy requires constant practice, constant honing of skills, constant use of procedural and evidential techniques and all on a daily basis. The part-time advocate (which is what most Solicitor Advocates now are and what most employed Crown Prosecution Service Lawyer Advocates would be) will never reach the level of skill and practised ability which the Barrister can demonstrate through constant and daily experience in the Crown Courts.
Para 2.15 How exactly does the Government suggest that any lawyer should acquire his/her advocacy skills? Someone (whether Crown Prosecution Service Lawyer Advocate or the independent Barrister) is going to have to "cut his teeth" in simple cases in the Crown Court. Experience of the Crown Court has to be gained somehow. Do we really want a cadre of partly experienced lawyers dragging down standards? That will inevitably be the result of these proposals. Furthermore, when will the Government realise that these constant attacks on the Bar undermine the confidence and spirit of the independent practitioner? They cause the Barrister to ask himself why he should continue to work unsocial hours and put up with the stress of independent practice if his very existence is to be constantly under threat. Can the author of the Consultation Paper really fail to realise what value for money the Bar provides? Is it seriously thought that employed lawyers and Solicitors with practice-profit at the forefront of their minds will put in the hours which the Bar unstintingly works often for little or no reward.
Para 2.16 The Government finally concedes that Solicitors are more expensive. How can increased cost to the public purse be justified? The Bar is cost-efficient. How can a Government justify spending more rather than less? We agree that extended rights of audience would affect the Bar gradually. However we do not see how that argument justifies the change. The question is whether the Bar should be killed off at all not whether it should be killed off in stages.
Rights of Audience
Para 3.1 We dispute the propositions. The public does not have any informed choice. The choice is that of the Solicitor (whether he keeps the case in house or briefs a Barrister)! This is severe restriction of choice for the consumer who will never know that his choice is being so limited. We also dispute that the vast majority of Solicitors want to "offer (advocacy) services" to the public. The views of the majority of members of the Law Society to the contrary are well known.
Para 3.2 How can a Barrister compete on an even playing field for advocacy when the Solicitor is allowed such an advantage in capturing the client in the first place? "Flexibility" and "mobility" are what will result from the consequent destruction of the stable basis of our professional life and we will end up no better than those who move from job to job always on the look out for better pay and less work. The key phrase here is the concession that advocacy is "highly competitive". So it is but not for those in employment with job security who will survive until pension age whether their work is good, bad or indifferent or for those in private firms who will only compete for the greatest share of the firm's profits.
Para 3.3 We are very concerned by the suggestion that there may be differing routes to advocacy qualification. Advocates should all be bound by the same training requirements and the same conduct rules. Why should employed lawyers have different rules and standards? These comments apply to paragraphs 3.9 and 3.10 also.
Para 3.5 We are so opposed to these suggestions that we do not comment on the proposals in paragraphs 3.5 to 3.8. Clearly the Government will do what it wants irrespective of the wishes of the Bar and of the effect on the public.
Para 3.11 The comment that it would be "premature" for ILEX to have full rights of audience is of some concern. Clearly Legal Executives and Patent Agents will be the next groups of inadequately qualified "Advocates" to be launched on the unsuspecting public.
The Statutory Approval Process
ACLEC
We adopt the Response of the Bar Council.
Rights to Conduct Litigation
This is fusion by any other name. The door is opened to the Bar conducting cases as both litigators and advocates. The erosion of advocacy work for the Bar would encourage Barristers to expand into litigation in order to survive. The distinction between Barrister and Solicitor would disappear.
Other Proposed Amendments to Legislation
No comments
Legal Education
No comments
Malcolm Swift Q. C.
Leader of the North Eastern Circuit
Park Court Chambers
40, Park Cross Street
Leeds LS l 2QH
DX 26401 Leeds Park Square
September 1998
Updated November 1998
