Experimental virtual chambers BarFutures is to close its doors at the end of June after two years because of a ‘lack of appetite for change within the profession’, the Gazette has learned.

The alternative set was designed to meet the challenges posed by the Legal Services Act 2007 and give barristers a more cost-effective and time-efficient way to practise.

Rather than working in a traditional chambers, BarFutures provided management and marketing services and working accommodation in London and Manchester, to enable barristers to operate remotely and remain fully independent while benefiting from shared support.

It gave solicitors a more cost-effective and streamlined way to instruct barristers, using BarFutures’ own barristers, or the organisation’s nationwide network of affiliated chambers.

BarFutures director Ian Dodd told the Gazette: ‘When we set up two years ago we set some stretching financial targets. Despite achieving a turnover of £2m a year in our first 18 months and being able to cover all our costs, we couldn’t make the next step and failed to meet our targets.

‘Our shareholders, as they are perfectly entitled to do, decided to invest their money in some things with better returns. That's what businesses do.’Dodd said he did not want to take the easy route of blaming the recession, though he said the economic climate had not helped. He put the main problem down to the lack of appetite for change within the profession.‘I think we were too far in front [in terms of] the consequences of the LSA and didn't understand how slow the legal world would react to the possibilities and opportunities of the new world order,’ he said.But he said the profession is now waking up to the changes it needs to make, and there are a number of entrepreneurial businesses springing up that may be better equipped to prosper than BarFutures was. Dodd is now working on a new venture, running a business based on advising barristers’ chambers on how to set up and run ProcureCos – the new corporate vehicles designed to enable barristers to tender directly for work from volume purchasers of legal services.

He has secured the domain names www.procureco.co.uk and www.procureco.com and is already advising a small number of clients.

Dodd also has plans for a National Advocacy Network to market barristers in a similar way that QualitySolicitors has done for solicitors.