King's Inns, the institution that trains barristers, is likely to reintroduce a part-time course leading to a BL, The Irish Times has learned.
This follows rising concern that its recently introduced, one-year full-time course excluded people already working from becoming barristers.
Until last year those seeking qualification as barristers completed a two-year, part-time course in the King's Inns. Entry to this course required either a degree in law from a recognised university or completion of the King's Inns own two-year diploma in law.
This was replaced by a one-year full-time course, which had a heavier emphasis on professional training, including practical training in case preparation and advocacy, with the use of video-recordings.
While the reaction of students and the profession to the new course has been positive, there was criticism that people who traditionally combined studying for the Bar with their job, including civil servants, employees of the Courts Service, members of the Garda Síochána and journalists, were not able to take the full-time course.
This has led the King's Inns to consider a new part-time course. It is not expected be a reinstatement of the original course, but a form of modularisation of the new course.
However, it is understood that the King's Inns is not prepared to abandon its monopoly of barrister training, as it was urged to do by a recent Competition Authority report.
Some concessions are likely to be made to the authority's report in the area of the requirements for entry onto the professional training course. It is understood that the King's Inns is examining its own diploma course, and that offered by other institutions like Dublin Institute of Technology, with a view to broadening the entry requirements.
Meanwhile, the Competition Authority has been asked by the Government for its views on a report on the criteria required for the promotion of barristers to the level of senior counsel.
Last year, before the publication of the Competition Authority report, the Attorney General set up a committee to examine the basis on which barristers received this promotion. Senior counsel routinely command 50 per cent more in fees that junior counsel.
The process whereby people are promoted to senior counsel is not a transparent one. Barristers apply after a number of years in practice, and their applications are considered by a committee that includes the Chief Justice, the president of the High Court, the Attorney General and the chairman of the Bar Council.
The Attorney General asked the committee to define a set of rules and to introduce greater transparency. These rules would also cover barristers from Northern Ireland being called to the Inner Bar in the Republic.
It reported last November and the report was sent to the Bar Councils of both jurisdictions, and to the senior judiciary for their comments.