Profession Terms of Engagement
NEW TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT
FOR BARRISTERS After years of waiting and months of consultation, new terms of work for barristers have been approved and will become effective from January 2013. Barrie Akin, Chairman of the Bar Council’s Contractual Terms Implementation Committee, explains
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or more years than it cares to recall the Bar Council has considered the non-contractual terms on which barristers offer their services to solicitors (set out in Appendix G of the Code of Conduct) to be outdated and unsatisfactory. They not only lacked clarity but also had an adverse effect on the strength and diversity of the Bar. Many barristers have faced unacceptable delays in collecting their fees and have had to write off significant amounts of unpaid fees for want of an effective enforcement process. The problem has been particularly acute for barristers in the early years of practice and it may have contributed to the loss of young talent from the Bar. Devising new terms of work has proved to be a major challenge not least because the arrangements for approval of necessary rule changes have been both complex and time-consuming. But, at long last, we now have a set of contractual terms which are fit for the purposes of the modern Bar and the clients we seek to serve. Following extensive consultations, the BSB applied to the Legal Services Board (LSB) in October 2011 to replace the old terms of work with new contractual terms called “Standard Conditions of Contract for the Supply of Legal Services by Barristers to Authorised
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Persons 2012”(“the New Contractual Terms”). The LSB approved the New Contractual Terms on 27 July 2012 and they will become effective on 31 January 2013. The key changes taking place on that date are: The old terms of work and Withdrawal of Credit Scheme are zz abolished in their entirety. They are replaced in the Code by the New Contractual Terms and an advisory “List of Defaulting Solicitors and other Authorised Persons” (“the Advisory List”). The Cab Rank Rule is amended so that, instead of applying zz to the old terms of work, it will apply to the New Contractual Terms and to any terms which the barrister or his chambers have published as the barrister’s standard terms, so that solicitors or other Authorised Persons (see below) can require a barrister to accept instructions on the New Contractual Terms or on the barrister’s own standard terms. The usual exceptions to the Cab Rank Rule (for example, being professionally embarrassed) will continue to apply. A barrister will have the right (but not the obligation) zz to refuse instructions on credit from solicitors or other Authorised Persons named on the Advisory List, if the barrister so wishes.
December 2012
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