The Bar Council has published guidance to chambers on setting up a new business model that will enable barristers to bid for work in competition with solicitors.

The new concept, dubbed ProcureCo, is a separate corporate vehicle that can be formed as an adjunct to a set of chambers to obtain work for barristers. It is intended to allow barristers to get to the source of more instructions, and will mean a reversal of the usual referral direction, with barristers instructing solicitors.

Following rule changes agreed by the Bar Standards Board which came into force this month, the model provides a means for barristers to work together and with other professions. A client such as a local authority or the Legal Services Commission would contract with the ProcureCo, which would act as agent for the barristers which set it up. If the client requires other legal or non-legal services, the ProcureCo can obtain them by creating separate panels of solicitors and others.

Bar chairman Nicholas Green QC said: ‘The ProcureCo will control the pot of money. In this way it reverses the normal order of things and barristers get their hands on the money first.’ He said it would ‘certainly’ result in barristers being in competition with solicitors, but added that the bar’s only way to compete against greater ­competition from solicitors was to ‘fight back’.

Green said the Bar Council would continue its campaign to raise awareness among large purchasers of legal services and clients about instructing barristers.

Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson said ProcureCo was a ‘telling development’ and solicitors ‘will need to consider the competitive threat’, and may wish to expand their own advocacy services.