The creation of an external regulating body for the legal professions forms the centrepiece of the Competition Authority's proposed reform of the sector.
It has recommended the setting up of a Legal Services Commission (LSC), either as a direct regulator of all lawyers or as a body performing a supervisory role over existing, or possibly new, self-regulating bodies.
However, in this scenario the existing bodies, the Law Society and the Bar Council, would have to change and fully separate their regulatory from their representative functions.
The proposed LSC should be set up by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and have a majority of non-lawyers, it said. As well as regulating the professions, such a Legal Services Commission would set standards for professional education for solicitors and barristers, currently the monopoly of the Law Society and the King's Inns respectively.
The provision of additional professional educational services is another central proposal of the report. It would like to see a number of such providers operating, including some outside Dublin.
Existing business structures were also identified by the authority as an obstacle to competition. This, it found, was especially the case with barristers, who are permitted to operate in the Law Library only as sole traders, and only barristers who are members of the Law Library can represent clients in court.
The authority made a number of proposals in this regard. The main one was the abolition of the "sole trader" rule, in order to allow barristers to form partnerships with each other, or operate in chambers, as in the UK.
It also proposed allowing solicitors and barristers to form partnerships and share fee income.
It wants to see the end of the rigid demarcation between the two professions, allowing individuals who qualify as barristers and solicitors to describe themselves as such. However, it stopped short of proposing a fused profession, acknowledging that specialisation between advocates on the one hand, and client counsellors on the other, always tended to emerge.
It also recommends some form of direct access to barristers by members of the public. This could take the form of the total abolition of the rules preventing direct access, or expanding the existing direct access scheme.
The Competition Authority also wants to see barristers, employed by, for example, the DPP or other institutions, allowed to represent their clients in court. It also calls on the Law Library to admit part-time barristers.