Core advocacy skills must be at the heart of any quality assurance scheme, says Philip Mott QC
Like it or not, the Bar is changing. The Legal Services Bill, slowly making its way through Parliament, will bring changes of structure to the provision of legal services—or at least remove the present restrictions on the kind of structures through which legal services can be provided. Statutory emphasis will be put on the consumer’s needs, and one of these is an assurance of the quality of legal services in an open market.
This all sounds laudable, but is there any need for further bureaucracy? It would be wrong to think of quality assurance as a new concept for the Bar. Barristers have been selling their services to a sophisticated and knowledgeable market for centuries. Solicitors who choose counsel, having watched them in court, are accountable to their clients. And the corporate, institutional or insurance client, the provider of repeat business, is also sophisticated and demanding. Such a private market model provides its own assurance of quality—high quality leads to professional success, and those of low quality go to
