Geeklawyer was rung up at home by a High Court judge a while ago. It was a pro­foundly unnerv­ing expe­ri­ence. He had just got out of the bath and was naked, not being accus­tomed to bathing with any clothes on. The phone rang:

“Mr [Geeklawyer], this is Jus­tice [scary] I wanted to ask about your Pub­lic Access Bar Cer­tifi­cate …”

An eter­nal moment of panic ensued. Dear Lord, here was a High Court judge ring­ing Geeklawyer when he was naked and with­out even an impro­vised argu­ment for mod­esty. Worse, he was improp­erly dressed. Would his Lord­ship be able to hear him? He scram­bled for his wig and plonked it atop his head. A glance in the mir­ror made it obvi­ous that he looked absurd. But then it seemed unlikely His Lord­ship was ring­ing from the Bench and must be in his cham­bers nor could he see him. At that moment of release from death and pain an improb­a­ble inex­plic­a­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal reac­tion, more nor­mally seen at the end of a hangman’s noose, occurred: Geeklawyer’s man­hood rose proud unbid­den and unwel­come. Much like it’s owner on so many many occasions.

Geeklawyer is an old fash­ioned sort and is frankly dis­mayed at the idea of judges ring­ing cham­bers. It seems so, well, trade, what’s wrong with a liv­er­ied foot­man with a per­sonal message?

But this com­i­cal moment high­lights much more than Geeklawyer’s embar­rass­ment: the real­i­sa­tion that the Bar has within its grasp a means of resist­ing the slaver­ing hoards of Solicitor-Inadequates scrab­bling to sur­mount the citadel of the Bar in rap­ine orgy. Oth­ers have noted that the Bar is doomed to shrink, in no part due to the Bar Council’s uncanny abil­ity to shoot itself in the foot even when pro­vided with an unloaded gun, point­ing at the heav­ens, and whilst wear­ing Kevlar shoes. This much is a given.

Oddly, how­ever the Bar Coun­cil has changed the rules in what seems to be a lit­tle known way.

Bar­ris­ters gen­er­ally speak to clients only through the inter­me­di­a­tion of solic­i­tors whose role, like that of the saints, is to allow mere mor­tals to speak to God. Or Geeklawyer, which is the near­est thing on this Earth.

A well known excep­tion exists: Direct Pro­fes­sional Access. Here suit­able pro­fes­sion­als such as accoun­tants and in-house lawyers may speak direct to a bar­ris­ter. It was an old sop to the Bar to com­pen­sate for the increased rights of audi­ence for solicitors.

More recently a scheme was intro­duced in 2006: the Pub­lic Access scheme. Under this scheme bar­ris­ters who have done a Bar Coun­cil course can, with lim­i­ta­tions (e.g. no crime & no fam­ily work), take direc­tions directly from mem­bers of the pub­lic. They may give advice draft doc­u­ments and rep­re­sent the lay punter in court. There are lim­i­ta­tions; they may not con­duct lit­i­ga­tion, for exam­ple serve process or write to other par­ties. That must be done by the lay punter.

The trou­ble is that the scheme seems lit­tle known. When the issue came up in the High Court Geeklawyer was in the pecu­liar posi­tion of hav­ing to explain the scheme to the judge and the other par­ties. Which was impor­tant because his fee depended on it: the utter stinkers oppo­site asserted that Geeklawyer need not be paid since he had appeared oth­er­wise than through instruc­tion by a solic­i­tor. And hence an adjourn­ment, much con­fu­sion and a few days later a call to a naked Geeklawyer.

Geeklawyer was happy to instruct His Lord­ship in the cor­rect law. And not for the first time it must be said.

Geeklawyer recounted this tale to Ruthie today and she reached the same con­clu­sion as him — she isn’t always slow or wrong what­ever VM may say in his pri­vate emails to Geeklawyer.

While we com­plain of the slow asphyx­i­a­tion of the Bar by solicitor-Inadequates we may have within our grasp the means of break­ing, or at least loos­en­ing, their death grip. We can cir­cum­vent solic­i­tors in many cases and go direct to clients rather than wait cap in hand for favours from solic­i­tors who may be more inclined to give any advo­cacy to their own peo­ple. Fur­ther we may be able to drive some work the way of solic­i­tors which may make them less inclined to fuck us about. Addi­tion­ally the bill­able hours are likely to be greater.

There is still a catch. Many lay pun­ters will not wish to under­take the man­age­ment of lit­i­ga­tion and in this case they must be farmed out to a solic­i­tor. Then the risk of poach­ing is sig­nif­i­cant but any wise solic­i­tor will see why this might not be wise. How­ever with the Carter reforms and the prospect of bar­ris­ters form­ing proper part­ner­ships this hur­dle may also fall. Suit­able cham­bers may be able to hire their own solic­i­tors and refer pun­ters to their own team.

Time will tell if this is how things will pan out but there is one obvi­ous down­side: the Bar will look increas­ingly like solic­i­tors and they us. A fused pro­fes­sion. Wouldn’t that be ghastly? Imag­ine being mis­taken for a Solicitor-Inadequate? :cry: