The Bar Standards Board (BSB) will soon decide, pursuant to Section 28 of the Legal Services Act 2007, whether allowing barristers to go into firms as equal principals with other lawyers or barrister-only partnerships will make it more likely that consumers have a wider choice of lawyers and increased access to justice.
The way the decision must go is clear. It must be against change. Permitting it will not increase choice or access to justice and risks decrease by allowing the decline and eventually the death of the independent Bar, even though consumers might not have wanted this to happen.
