Bar Standards Board

Your recent editorial on the Bar Standards Board rings true. A barrister’s misconduct can be blatant or very subtle and the BSB’s assessment officer, considering a complaint, can deliberately overlook a fundamental flaw in the barrister’s conduct if needs must. When backed into a corner the assessment officer’s tactics  can consist solely of an equally blatant or subtle use of semantics: the purpose of which is only to subvert. Challenging the assessment officer’s use of words to justify a BSB decision not to investigate a complaint becomes a game of tennis. Soon the BSB shutters come down and you are frozen out. It is just as well, from the BSB’s viewpoint, that no preliminary face to face conflict resolution procedures are available to the complainant to iron out ‘misunderstandings’. If they were available then total control of the agenda would slip away from the BSB’s grasp.