Category Archives: Regulation

Blogosphere Bust-Up: Author Of Anti-Cab Rank Rule Report Hits Back After Bar Council Chief Takes A Swipe

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Bar Council chair Maura McGowan QC doesn't think much of the recent Legal Services Board (LSB) report on the Bar's cab rank rule (which basically suggests that the rule which many barristers hold dear to their hearts is more about money than helping people).

Indeed, McGowan thinks so little of the report that she's not sure if it's real, referring to it in inverted commas as a "report" in a letter to members of the Bar published yesterday on the Criminal Bar Association's blog. The Bar Council supremo doesn't stop there, proceeding to take a swipe at the report's authors, Professors John Flood and Morten Hviid...

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DPP Slams Twitter Joke Trial QC For Making ‘Cheap Points’ And Failing To Grasp ‘Sophistication’ Of Social Media Issues

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Having narrowly beaten Kirsty Brimelow in the last battle of the top QCs, Twitter Joke Trial barrister John Cooper QC today found himself up against none other than Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Keir Starmer QC.

Cooper got things underway by ridiculing the DPP's new social media prosecution guidelines, which he described as "the longest ever explanation of common sense I’ve seen".

When presenter Sarah Montague put Cooper's words to Starmer on this morning's Today Programme, the usually unflappable DPP lost his cool, hitting back angrily... Continue reading

Edicts From The Ivory Tower: The Troubling Disconnect Between The SRA’s ‘Sophisticated’ Decision-Makers And Its ‘Over-Zealous’ Prosecutor Foot-Soldiers

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A "wholly unjustified and unreasonable" decision to prosecute a small law firm for supposed failure to comply with the new Code of Conduct has left Andrew Hopper QC of the view that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is becoming increasingly dysfunctional

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Disillusioned Barrister Unveils Groundbreaking New Advocacy Regulation Regime

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The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) doesn’t impress The Law Horse. So he is proposing four alternative ways to keep barristers and solicitor-advocates in check.

Mystery Shopper

Who better to assess an advocate’s skills than their client? Not a real client, obviously, they can’t be trusted. Most of them are even criminals. No, what is needed is a stooge, an actor: a mystery client.

For all intents and purposes, the actor is a genuine client. In liaison with a police handler they are arrested for a pre-agreed offence. From that point on, the system takes charge and the lawyers are called. The client – who is the one person who holds all of the facts – is perfectly positioned to assess the advocate’s skill: the conference abilities and advice giving, the bail applications and decision making, the client care, trial advocacy, management of expectations and plea in mitigation.

Only, pity the poor mystery client whose police handler loses their file...

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Solicitors’ Profession Could Face a ‘Lost Generation Of Talent’

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Three weeks on from the scrapping of the trainee minimum wage and the decision looks more ill-thought through than ever, argues Oxford University Bachelor of Civil Laws (BCL) student Richard Ridyard

The thousands of LPC graduates without a training contract have choked off the arteries of confidence in the legal graduate market. We find ourselves at a crossroads. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has made a bold step by abolishing the minimum wage for trainee solicitors. But now that the dust has settled and we have had a chance to reflect on that decision, was it the right one? Here, I argue that the four reasons Legal Cheek gave to explain why the SRA acted as it did are flawed.
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