Independent regulation of legal professionals is ’more important now than ever’, the head of the Bar Standards Board said last night defending the regulator’s role. 

In a speech at the Bar Standards Board headquarters, Mark Neale, director general, said that professional regulation is not like the regulation of utilities. The regulator can and should collaborate with the profession - ’we are not adversaries’, he stressed. ’The public interest does not lie in countering monopoly power, but in negotiating the inevitable information asymmetries and complexity inherent in a specialist field which most of the public will encounter only intermittently.’

However he noted that the interests of the public and those of the profession are not always the same. ’We approach the delivery of our regulatory functions in in the public interest; the Bar Council is there to represent the professional interest. Sometimes the two will coincide, but not always.’

Public interest objectives include putting the consumer first, he said.  ’We are not there simply to act as gatekeeper or disciplinarian in individual cases, but to ask searching questions about how the wide range of arrangements and rules we oversee support or inhibit the bar in meeting the needs of the public.’

Strongly rejecting the concept of a single legal regulator, Neale said that the risks and opportunities at the bar will not necessarily match those of the other legal professions. ’Independence of decision-making and operational and psychological independence are essential to the Bar Standards Board’s ability to do its job,’ he said. 

But he also warned of ’unexamined practices’ which no longer work in the interests of consumers or the diversity of the bar. For example, will the decisions being taken now by chambers and employers about how many pupillages to offer  ensure the adequate supply of barristers in every area of practice? Or might it be in the interests of both clients and barristers if, when solicitors refer clients to barristers, the client were to be given more choice?

’We’d like to see chambers play a more prominent role in overseeing standards, equality and access,’ Neale said. 

The BSB is currently procuring an external review of its enforcement processes after receiving a bruising rating from the Legal Services Board.