Bar chairman calls on chambers to use new business models

The chairman of the Bar Council has called on chambers to make greater use of new business models such as ProcureCos in a bid to increase the amount of work they get from local authorities and other organisations.

Speaking at the Bar’s 25th annual conference in London at the weekend, Nicholas Green QC said: “We should be a godsend to local authorities who need to reduce costs but maintain quality.

“Some local authorities I have been speaking with have suggested that the absence of a single entity with which to contract can be an obstacle to sending the Bar more work. So, if this is true, chambers should quickly cure that problem and set up a ProcureCo.”

Green said there was a similar problem with major corporations “who report that rule one in their procurement manual is that they will only send legal work to ‘entities’”.

“The reason for this is often as mundane as the corporation requiring an entity with which to contract and upon which it can impose its own billing requirements,” he added.

The Bar Council chairman said: “In my estimation, there are hundreds of millions of pounds worth of work which the Bar could obtain, but which it is presently unable to service because of a perception by clients that we are not easy to contract with.”

Green also said that if the government expects the professions to engage in a pact of cooperation to deal with prospective cuts, “then the legal profession as a whole, including barristers, solicitors and judges, needs the clearest possible undertaking and promise from government that when the public purse refills, so critical resources will be allocated to justice”.

He warned that Ministry of Justice figures concealed the true extent of legal aid cuts. The MoJ’s claimed £350m saving “ignores about £150m in what is loosely called ‘Baby P expenditure’,” he said, adding that the net affect was therefore a cut of £500m.

Green urged publicly funded barristers to diversify away from legal aid work. “This is inevitable and many sets are now doing just this,” the Bar’s chairman suggested. “The reality is that legal aid will shrink significantly and there will be long term pressure on rates. The more government says that the court system is expensive the more they will question the basic need for advocacy as a means of resolving disputes.”

He also called on the Bar to recognise the “moral dilemma” of calling so many people to the Bar who may have no real prospect of attaining pupillage.