Taking instructions

BACK IN 1989 the Bar Council decided that accountants (chartered or certified) and chartered tax advisers should be entitled to instruct barristers without the intervention of a solicitor. The scope of the rules concerning this access is set out in the Table below.

However whereas a trainee solicitor learns how to instruct a barrister as part of the Legal Practice Course accountants and tax advisers are not given this type of training. Therefore for many accountants and tax advisers the Bar remains an unknown quantity.

With its age-old traditions the Bar can seem off-putting. However generally the Bar is modernising and most barristers are now more approachable than was once the case. For example although most practising barristers use the services of a clerk clients can e-mail or telephone many barristers directly in the same way as they would...