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News
Bar chair says ban all fees paid by advocates to solicitors
updated on 26 October 2015
Bar chairman Alistair MacDonald QC has said that there should be a complete ban on all fees paid by barristers to instructing solicitors to prevent attempts to disguise referral fees as administration fees.
Speaking at the 30th Annual Bar and Young Bar Conference on 17 October, MacDonald said that those involved with referral fee payments – defined by him as “squalid backhanders” – were similar to drug cheats in sport. He said: “Those who indulge in these nefarious activities are ever ready to seek new ways to hide the truth of what they are really about under the cloak of a name such as an administration fee.”
MacDonald also spoke about the possibility of Crown Court advocacy panels, the praise-worthy role of the employed (ie, in-house) Bar, and the historical and present day importance of the courts, which he said were “not an optional extra”, pointing to a “misalignment that has occurred in which justice, rather than being put at the heart of our constitutional framework, is now put on the side lines”.
