The Bar’s public access scheme has been in place for only a few years, but the service is growing fast. It has been praised by the Court of Appeal for providing clients with the appropriate advice and representation at a fraction of the cost of the traditional solicitor and barrister model. All barristers are entitled to register under the scheme, but are required to attend a special course before doing so – mainly directed at client care.

Under the scheme we may perform all of the usual functions performed by a barrister: we may advise clients and represent them in courts or before tribunals. Barristers have always acted as a specialist consultant advisory service within the legal profession, this new scheme is intended to allow clients to get directly to that specialist advice with the minimum of delay and cost.

The scheme is particularly applicable is where the client seeks assistance in relation to a non-contentious matter such as the terms of a specific contract or business arrangement that they are considering entering, or in relation to their standard terms or business practices.

Whilst we may undertake all the usual services that we provide as barristers, this does entail some restrictions which make the service unsuitable for certain cases: importantly, we may not enter correspondence on behalf of a client or undertake investigatory work on their behalf. This does mean that we may not take overall conduct of a case – we act as a referral service.

My general policy is that where substantial correspondence will need to be entered into I recommend that the client gathers all of the information that I may need and I then advise on the strength of the case. If the decision is to proceed to litigation (because the case is sufficiently strong) then I generally recommend that a solicitor is engaged at that stage. This has the effect of front-loading the litigation as the solicitor is instructed with a full picture of how to proceed and with counsel’s advice as to the way forward. It also means that the client has reached the stage of knowing the strengths of their case as cheaply as possible as much of the initial “leg-work” has been done by them.