Unanimously recommended against fusion.

Recommended extending the rights of audience for solicitors and direct access to barristers for other professionals e.g. accountants.

These changes have been implemented.

No change recommended separating branches.

Legal profession should be similar the medical profession.

Common training for all to practise as general lawyers.

After a period, those who wished to specialise could become consultants.

Pressure for change is less now than a few years ago, because the granting to solicitors of limited rights of audience has allayed their strongest grievance.

Young lawyers would not have to decide which part of the profession to join.

At present, after University young lawyers to be have to decide whether to be a solicitor or barrister, without experiencing any practical law.

where a client explains the case to a solicitor, who then instructs a barrister.

A barrister in charge of the case would be able to deal with the instructions and evidence better than one who received instructions second hand.

This would lead to continuity of casework.

Barristers often find themselves double booked and have to return the brief at the last moment for another barrister to read and deal with.

Found three-quarters of all prosecution briefs accepted by barristers were returned shortly before the trial.

Solicitors (or even the solicitor's clerk) sit behind the barrister in court throughout the trial, with little to do.

Lawyers would be able specialise rather that to send work out to barristers.

Solicitors with a talent for advocacy could practise it in any court, which largely they can now as solicitor-advocates (there are about 3,700 nation-wide).

Expand the field from which judges are appointed.

Solicitors can already be appointed as Recorders and Circuit judges, a few have been appointed as High Court Judges.

Effective close workings of the Bar would be destroyed.

Fusion would break up the close working relationships between a comparatively small Bar.

Most lawyers to become general practitioners, and try to deal with cases himself rather than use an expert.

The standards of advocacy would be put at risk, because of the lack of experience in particular types of case.

The relationship between barristers and judges (whom barristers often wish to become) is of the highest integrity.

There is also close supervision by colleagues and judges.

Small firms would not have access to the full range of knowledge and experience available at the Bar.

The best lawyers would gravitate towards the larger firms, and would not be available to all clients.

Lawyers who wanted to specialise in narrow areas of work would be unable to do so within a single firm.

The second opinion of a barrister on a case can bring objectivity to it, and is extremely useful to solicitors confronting a client who thinks he has a good case.

Fundamental rule that ensures client will always receive proper representation, no matter how distasteful the case or the client.

and

Law Society surveys

25 November 1999

In civil work, it is generally more economical to employ the services of a barrister, particularly a junior, for work within his or her area of expertise than to use a solicitor.

Charge out rates makes it from 25% to 50% cheaper to employ the services of a junior barrister than to employ an assistant solicitor in London.

In the regions, the differential is between 3% and 36%.

At the more senior/experienced level barristers are up to 15% less expensive, but comparable to partners in the regions.

An important implication of the findings of this survey is that for a solicitors' firm to tie a client in to that firm’s services throughout the progress of a case is likely to be more expensive for that client, as well as denying choice. The specialist advice and advocacy offered by the Bar remains less expensive.

£150

Inns of Court; solicitor-advocates

A report set up by the Inns of Court has suggested that it is time to admit solicitor-advocates as members of the bar.

The review headed by Sir Murray Stuart-Smith claims that moves to include those with rights of audience in the high court in its ranks would be in line with the government's legal reforms but would not be a step towards the amalgamation of the roles of solicitor and barrister.