The legal profession has bowed to the pressure of external calls for reform by agreeing major changes in the way it interacts with the public.
The cost of employing a lawyer may drop as a result of the changes agreed within the profession over the past month in response to a critical Competition Authority report in December.
The Bar Council has agreed that barristers will be required to provide clients with a cost estimate before undertaking any work, a move it says will encourage consumers to get their solicitors to shop around before engaging a counsel.
For the first time, barristers will be given limited powers to advertise. They will be permitted to list their areas of expertise, the cases in which they have been involved and any articles they have written on a consumer web page to be drawn up by the Bar Council in consultation with the National Consumer Agency.
The Bar Council has also agreed to provide wider direct access for the public to barristers for legal advice. At present, members of the public must first go to a solicitor before engaging a barrister.
It says it will campaign against the practice of paying a junior barrister an automatic two-thirds of the rate due to a senior counsel without reference to the work done.
Solicitors will soon be able to take short courses to retrain as barristers and vice versa. The Bar Council has already agreed to this change while the Law Society, which regulates solicitors, says it is finalising the details of courses which will allow conversion within months or even weeks.
The Law Society has also agreed to amend its regulations to allow designation of solicitors as specialists and to allow them to advertise as specialists.
The authority's report said the legal profession was in need of root- and-branch reform as it was "permeated with serious and disproportionate restrictions on competition".
However, the Bar Council and the Law Society both say they have already implemented a number of the authority's 29 recommendations while others are being addressed.
The Bar Council says it has implemented or is about to implement nine of the 13 recommendations relating to barristers, but that it "draws the line" at the other four.
The Law Society says the four recommendations directly relating to its members have been addressed or are being addressed.
Both organisations have rejected the proposal for a legal services commission to regulate the profession, though they will accept the appointment of an ombudsman.
The Bar Council is also opposed to changes which would allow barristers employed by companies to appear in court.
Proposals to permit barristers to work in partnerships are also rejected, as are suggestions that solicitors could hold the title of senior counsel or that non-barristers could lead barristers.
