In a radical and historic shake-up of the public access rules, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has approved the Bar Council’s request for the lifting of the ban on lay clients approaching barristers directly.
The final constitutional hurdle to the move after extensive discussions was the approval of the DCA, which was given in July. The lifting of the ban had been in the pipeline since 2001, when it was set in motion by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report, Competition in the Professions, which proposed that the Bar Council relax the prohibition on direct access.
