For a number of years accountants, insolvency practitioners, architects, engineers and other professionals have been entitled to consult barristers direct without the intervention of a solicitor or other legal professional under a scheme known as “direct professional access”. A few years later this right was extended to other organizations such as trade unions and even private companies who were approved by the Bar Council under a scheme known as BarDirect. These schemes have now merged and are now known as Licensed Access.
The Licensed access scheme is governed by The Licensed Access Rules and Recognition Regulations.
As the professions that had previously enjoyed direct professional access to the Bar rarely needed advice on IP and technology law we never had more than a handful of instructions under the scheme. Most of this was advice to architects on copyright in their drawings. We got rather more enquiries under BarDirect but even these diminished after Public Access became possible.
Nevertheless, we welcome Licensed Access work. In addition to architects we believe that we could help accountants, engineers, insurers and other professionals expand their practices. We run courses that we believe to be useful to members of those professions and we invite them to contact Jill Hayfield on 0800 862 0055 or by email to discuss what we can do for them.
NIPC Law 