In the after­math of the knob-head Bruce Hymen mat­ter it was a lit­tle hard for us to main­tain the pre­sen­ta­tion that the Bar was a lit­i­ga­tion priest­hood of unim­peach­able morals. Vis­i­ble pub­lic humil­i­a­tion of pro­fes­sion­als — the mod­ern fash­ion for trans­parency, aka Tabloid Food — was inevitable.

Nonethe­less, the imple­men­ta­tion seems a bid odd. Minor stuff is not made pub­lic nor stuff related to med­ical prob­lem: drunk­en­ness etc which seems rea­son­able. On the other hand while Seri­ous stuff is on there for­ever, and less seri­ous stuff is sub­ject to a Reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Offend­ers style pro­vi­sion and removed after two years, accu­sa­tions of incom­pe­tence and inad­e­quate ser­vice don’t go on there at all.

This is surely the value of such a thing to pun­ters? know­ing when a Bar­ris­ter fucked up suf­fi­ciently to be dis­ci­plined or queried about fit­ness to prac­tice and thusly to be avoided seems useful.

If you’re going to have such a gim­mick at least make it useful.