The Bar Standards Board is ‘single-handedly frustrating government policy’ by its tardiness in changing rules to permit barristers to join legal disciplinary practices (LDPs), according to a solicitor trying to set up a new-style partnership.

Sole practitioner Edward Simpson, who practises as Faraday’s Law in London, wants to join forces with employed barrister John Burchill. The Solicitors Regulation Authority amended its rules to allow solicitors to practise in LDPs from 31 March. However, the bar’s regulator is still working on amendments to its code of conduct, which prohibits barristers from working in such partnerships.

Simpson said: ‘We’re being frustrated and totally hampered. The BSB is in the stone age. Because the two professional regulators are out of sync we are having to put our business plans on hold.’

The BSB said its duty is to determine whether the current rules should be changed in order to be consistent with the regulatory objectives of the Legal Services Act 2007. ‘It is therefore not a case of a regulator frustrating the will of parliament,’ a spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, commercial barrister Patricia Robertson QC (pictured) has voiced concern that the SRA’s focus on ‘entity regulation’ rather than disciplining individuals may ‘increase regulatory risk’ by diluting personal responsibility. She told the BSB’s annual Clementi debate on the impact of the Legal Services Act that legal regulators risk making the same mistakes as the much-criticised Financial Services Authority. In contrast, the FSA is now shifting its focus on to disciplinary action against individuals, she said.

Robertson also said barristers are in danger of losing control of their own professional standards. Barristers working in LDPs regulated by the SRA would potentially be subject to less stringent rules than those applied by the BSB when the two conflict, she argued.

Legal Services Board chairman David Edmonds said that the mindsets of legal professionals still need to change: ‘The act presents opportunities, but those opportunities will only be seen if the leaders of the professions look at the ­legislation and think about how they can do things differently.’