THE conference title says it all: The Future of The Bar. Assailed on both sides — Clementi, Carter — barristers meet this week to ponder what ministers like to call their “direction of travel”. On Saturday some 500 of them assemble in London to debate — and question — the Lord Chancellor on whether the Criminal Bar will survive; the impact of legal aid changes; the threat of a new super-regulator; and how to tackle complaints.

The changes promise radical upheaval. But the mood is not all gloom. Paul Kirtley, the conference chairman and a barrister in Leeds, says: “It has been a difficult year, particularly for the publicly funded Bar . . . a lot of uncertainty. But I hope people feel that their views have been represented and that there’s a positive way forward. There is cautious optimism.”

More important, he adds, was that the Bar acted and felt as a “coherent whole”. “It’s not a question of fat-cats and the rest: people do this job because they care about it. Whether from Newcastle or Plymouth, people feel part of the one Bar.”

The upbeat talk is echoed by Stephen Hockman, QC, this year’s Bar chairman. He dismisses the prospect of a dying or reduced Criminal Bar. The legal aid changes, he predicts, will correct the “ravages” of inflation and restore the profitability of criminal work, improving its standing and the extent to which it attracts people.

And he seems confident that despite the proposed over-arching regulator for the profession, the Bar will carry on regulating itself. “In a nutshell, it seems absolutely clear that under the Legal Services Act, the Bar will be recognised as a separate regime and a separate profession from solicitors and other legal services providers.” There will, he agrees, be “a new supervisory regulator but each regime will have its own special rules and own raison d’ être. And I think the raison d’être of the Bar is going to be, as in many ways it traditionally has been, specialist advice, specialist drafting, specialist advocacy.”

The Legal Services Bill will shake up the way lawyers practise — allowing them to set up one-stop mixed professional partnerships; to be employed by Tesco or Marks & Spencer; and to benefit from outside investment. The Bar has opposed the idea of mixed partnerships — and is still intent on preserving the barrister brand. Now, though, it seems to accept that there will be a blurring of boundaries: but barristers, to keep that name, will have to conform to its code of conduct and rules. And it may draw the line at partnership.

Hockman says: “I think that there’ll be an increasing tendency to practise in slightly different ways, such as in employment (rather than self-employment).” The profession, he predicts, will continue to expand steadily — but the profile will shift, with more barristers moving into employed work. “My main concern is that there should be flexibility between different modes of practice.”

The Bar does not want the job of regulating such partnerships and would also prefer barristers to stay under its control. So will barristers who join a mixed practice have to go under a different regulatory regime? “We will want to encourage as many advocates as possible to practise under our regulatory regime,” Hockman says. It remains an open question, “something to be consulted on . . . but,” he adds, “anyone wanting to undertake the specialist provision of legal services should do so under our regime. I favour an approach to the future that is pro-active, inclusive . . . so the Bar continues to expand . . . steadily.” In that way it will gain strength.

Hockman, now near the end of his year as chairman, sees the conference as a time to report back, to be accountable. He can be quietly confident. Under the Carter review of legal aid, the new regime will mean the long-overdue shift in rates to the junior end of the profession. Broadly, he admits, the Bar has been successful. But he is at pains to say that this is not at the expense of solicitors. “The envelope of money for the Bar is the same size as it was; the extra money will come from the very high-cost cases.” And he accepts that the era of the £1 million legal aid brief is over. “These fees were properly earned under the old system; they resulted from the length of big trials. But everyone accepts that that was wrong and needs to be changed.”

Apart from the Bar’s own battle over fees, the harder fight has been to persuade ministers, and the public, of the value in investing more money in legal services generally, he says. This, for Hockman, remains the ongoing challenge — and one that is part of the task of explaining what they are all about. When he took up his post, he wanted more done to explain the advocate’s role, to get over the message that defending a terrorist or rapist did not mean accepting their case. “I felt we’d not succeeded in getting people to understand the processes, the objectivity and skills set we deploy. I’ve not changed my mind but I realise that improving the profile of the profession is a wider business.”

The danger is that barristers as a group can be seen as sympathising with the criminal, or being on the side of human rights “and wrongly as unconcerned with the worries of the law-abiding majority, say on national security or the impact of crime on victims”.

“It seems to me that as well as ensuring a better understanding of what we do, and proving our own professional integrity, we must align ourselves with people’s day-to-day concerns.”

One way is to heed the growing clamour for greater efficiency in the justice system. Advocates could play their part in that. “In the past, our instinctive reaction would have been to stress the need for proper procedures. I feel at the same time we must do what we can to help people to run the system better and be more community-minded in the way we approach things.”

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