Rights of audience clampdown

Costs lawyers have backed calls by the Bar Council for a clampdown against unregulated and unqualified persons appearing at hearings.

The Bar complained about a surge in the number of people without rights of audience appearing at hearings as solicitor’s agents. They are usually unregistered barristers and are being used to conduct advocacy in open court at stage 3 quantum-only hearings under various personal injury pre-action protocols.

Association of Costs Lawyers chairman Iain Stark says: “Before Costs Lawyers, the courts utilised the legal myth of a so-called solicitor’s agent, notwithstanding that arguably these individuals had no rights of audience.

“But the law and the profession have been modernised in recent years, and it is clear that there is a push towards the need to be a practising lawyer with independent rights of audience to appear in open court. Having worked so hard to get where we are, some members will find it disappointing that the courts have not recognised this change and urge the Ministry of Justice to take action to ensure the integrity of the advocacy regime.”

Earlier this year, the Bar Council and Personal Injuries Bar Association wrote to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee (CPRC) with their concerns. They said the exemption in the Legal Services Act 2007 from needing rights of audience was plainly drafted to confine it “to hearings which are held in private”—the Act uses the out-dated phrase “in chambers”.

Minutes from the CPRC’s February meeting said it passed the issue on to the government because it was not the committee’s function to interpret the 2007 Act to resolve legal ambiguity.