Futureproofing the Bar

While the barristers surveyed for the report, ‘A brave new Bar: are barristers ready to rethink and reshape their practice’, published this week, are generally optimistic about their own prospects, many fear for the future of the Bar as a whole.

Two thirds expect to grow their practice or remain stable in the next five to seven years, and three quarters said their practice had either grown or remained stable when compared to three years ago.

However, nearly 40% of the 768 respondents cite the rising costs of doing business as a top three critical challenge. Tuition fees, living costs, rents and business rates are impinging on profitability across the profession, while nearly 30% of criminal and family barristers who do publicly funded work rate loss of income due to legal aid cuts as their most critical challenge.

Barristers worried that ‘the Bar is withering from the junior end upwards’ and that ‘certain areas of the Bar are being wiped out’.

Managing wellbeing in a high-pressure, long hours profession is another critical challenge, exacerbated by the increased use of email and smartphones during supposed leisure time. Increasing regulation and administration around data protection, money laundering and HMRC’s ‘Making Tax Digital’ scheme is adding to the burden.

Diversification into other practice areas is viewed as difficult due to lack of advice and help from others in the same set. And although direct access offers another avenue of work for the profession, only 11% of respondents currently do it.

Christopher O’Connor, head of segment marketing at LexisNexis, said: ‘There is optimism across the profession, but clearly the Bar is at breaking point.

‘How barristers operate, and approach work will have to change, for the Bar to be able to futureproof their sector within the legal profession. Chambers need to consider new tools and legal technology that can free their barristers and staff from time consuming manual tasks to reduce long working hours and open up new business development avenues.’