Daily Diary

The (dispute) resolution will be televised

Posted 18/05/2007 by The Daily Diary

Last week the Bar Council announced that it is teaming up with the UK’s second-most venerable anachronism, the BBC, to produce a documentary about, you guessed it, life at the Bar.

The programme is backed by funding from the Open University – where 98% of all practising barristers obtained their law degrees – and will follow the careers of various students, pupils and counsel in a bid to lift the metaphorical wig from the profession’s impenetrably esoteric scalp.

Because if there’s one thing the Bar needs, of course, it's thousands more applicants chasing a pupillage.

“Ironically, barristers can feel awkward and uneasy when they know a camera is around,” Fountain Court’s Tim Dutton QC told his adoring public last week in a confident, easy manner. “It is a time of unprecedented attack upon justice [and now] is the right time for us to take the modest risk of allowing a documentary to be made which holds up a mirror to our work.”

Let’s hope they like what they see.

The Bar takes a long, hard look in the mirror. And likes what it sees.