Orlagh Kelly: We're welcoming Mark Neale, former Director General of the Bar Standards Board to the Get Briefed podcast today. Mark, you've retired 10 or 14 days ago and I know that you had a farewell speech that you delivered to the stakeholders at the Bar, which we're going to talk about today because I think the wider Bar community would be interested to hear your thoughts. And after six years at the Bar Standards Board, I'm sure that you have a lot of things that you can talk about and opinions that you formed. Would that be correct?

Mark Neale: Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Orlagh Kelly: So you have had three distinct careers for anybody who doesn't particularly know spanning almost five decades the civil service itself financial services and then legal regulation. Do you want to tell the audience a little bit about your career and how you got to where you were in the Bar Standards Board?

Mark Neale: Yeah, so the first of my three careers was in the civil service, which, you know, where I was for 30 years, culminating in director general posts in the home office where I was responsible for counterterrorism and serious organised crime. And then in the treasury where I was responsible for tax and welfare policy and responsible for budgets for chancellors Brown and Darling.

And then in 2010 I moved on from the Treasury to my second career in financial services. I was the chief executive of the financial services compensation scheme for almost a decade, ensuring that FSCS was able to respond to another financial crisis and in particular to protect depositors if banks or building societies were to fail as they had during the financial crisis. I spent a brief time as the acting chief executive of the Lending Standards Board but I took up the role of director general at the Bar Standards Board in 2020.

Orlagh Kelly: Very good. Well, that's an astonishing and admirable career and very interesting. There's a lot more that I'd like to ask you about that. But moving into to your six years at the Bar Standards Board, which is a relatively long stint, as some would describe it, what attracted you to that role at the time? And I'm hearing that you started in 2020. If it was at the start of that year, I'm going to guess your first, Was it at the start of 2020 you took on the role?

Mark Neale: It was indeed, it was in February 2020, so was just a few weeks before COVID closed down society and the economy. So, well, it's a slightly overused word, isn't it? But I do think that the Bar is unique. It's unique in the sense of being a very individual profession.

You know of the 18,000 barristers 80 % are self-employed. It's unique in having very long traditions and I think it's unique in the challenge that it poses for the regulator because on the one hand the regulator is responsible for you know overseeing all those 18,000 plus individual barristers but also for standing up for the public interest and looking at how the profession collectively is serving the public interest, the public interest in the rule of law and the public interest in the effective representation of individual consumers and individual businesses.

Orlagh Kelly: And so thinking about the uniqueness of the profession, which I'm not sure is replicated in many other places of work in UK.

Mark Neale: Almost none, I would say.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah, it is genuinely unique. Would you say there are any moments during your six years that tested you, not intellectually per se, but more on an operational basis that give you some challenge?

Mark Neale: Well, obviously, the health emergency COVID within a few weeks of my arrival was hugely challenging. I think the organisation, the Bar Standards Board, rose magnificently to that challenge and in particular we were able to improvise at fairly short notice online examinations of civil and criminal litigation and that enabled a generation of students to continue with their careers in very difficult circumstances.

It also meant that we learned some lessons about putting on online examinations which stood in good stead as we move forward to examine ethics in pupillage but that was certainly a kind of huge challenge which the organization I think you know did surmount. We also had a big cyber attack in 2022 which closed down all our systems for the best part of two months.

Recovering from that was a challenge. But as we'll no doubt come on to discuss, there were more underlying challenges, particularly around operational performance and how the Bar Standards Board both maintained high quality in our decisions, but also ensured that our decisions were taken in a timely way.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah, and there's been a lot of attention in the legal press around that, so I would like to come back to that and get your opinion on that because I know that the criticism has been yielded at the Bar Standards Board for that. And so before we get into that, it would be fair to say that legal services regulation is a very particular structure in England and Wales. It's not straightforward independent regulation, probably because of the uniqueness of the profession that you've already spoken about.

But it's not all, the profession doesn't get to self-regulate either, anymore. And so for anyone who doesn't know the landscape, how would you describe where the Bar Standards Board actually sits and how and where it manages this somewhat hybrid version of regulation?

Mark Neale: Well, you're right, Orlagh. It's a very complex picture and for those who don't follow these things closely, it's important to understand that the Standards Board is in fact an operating arm of the Bar Council, the body representing barristers professionally. And under the 2007 Act, the Bar Council delegated the regulatory functions that it had previously carried out to the Bar Standards Board. So in our decision-making we are independent but we continue to be an operating arm of the Bar Council

And that reflects compromise in the 2007 Act the logical position I think would have been to establish a wholly independent regulator for the legal services profession, but that would have brought regulation within the boundaries of parliamentary oversight and responsible to the executive for pay and rations. And I think the then government back in 2007 rightly thought that infringed too greatly on the independence of the legal professions and so we have this compromise in which the professional bodies are required to delegate regulatory functions to independent arms. It's a compromise.

Orlagh Kelly: And so, I mean, that's a 2007 decision. We're now at 2026. Do you think that that continues to hold? That was the that's the correct mechanism and infrastructure for today's legal profession?

Mark Neale: I do think that it's important that the legal professions remain independent of both Parliament and the Executive for obvious constitutional reasons.

But I also think that it's very important that the frontline regulators like the Bar Standards Board do fulfil the underlying objectives of the 2007 reforms, which were to create independent regulators focused on the public interest, the public interest, not the interests of the professions. And one of the things I have attempted to do as the Director General over six years is to ensure that the Bar Standards Board does pose a robust challenge on public interest issues to the profession and to the Bar Council as the representative body.

Orlagh Kelly: And certainly over that six years there have been times when it's been quite evident externally through legal press again that the Bar Council as a representative body and the Bar Standards Board even as an arm have disagreed publicly and respectfully but one can see that there is a professional tension in terms of the two roles really. It's somewhat evident and possibly required would you say?

Mark Neale: Yes, well, I think that reflects the compromise that was reached in 2007. You know, the profession not surprisingly perhaps still regards the Bar Standards Board as its regulator and would like to see it operate within some fairly narrow tram lines, focusing on qualification to the profession and focusing on disciplinary functions, enforcement. Those are absolutely important and key regulatory functions but I certainly see the Bar Standards Board as having a wider remit than that as the reforms envisage focusing on the public interest.

Orlagh Kelly: And so if a barrister or a barristers were to think that really the Bar standards were to just stay in its lane, you would disagree with that, would you?

Mark Neale: I would respectfully disagree with that or I guess I think the Bar Standards Board has a wider responsibility than that.

Orlagh Kelly: And so I know from having spoken to you informally that you do have a genuine affection for the profession and that you've noticed, I guess, qualities within the profession that have impressed you. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Mark Neale: Yeah, well, I think it's very important to underline that it's a unique profession, but it's also an outstanding profession in many, many ways. There are barristers of great intellectual distinction, including, may I say, represented on the Bar Standards Board itself. There are barristers who give up their evenings and weekends for the purposes of educating and developing the next generation of barristers. I've attended many advocacy courses run by the Inns and the Circuits myself and seen that in operation over weekends and in the evenings.

There are barristers who sacrifice earnings to represent vulnerable clients pro bono. I've always been a great supporter of the barristers charity advocate which marshals that pro bono capacity. So I don't myself see an ethical issue at the Bar. I think the Bar is an ethical profession and characterised by intellectual distinction and a strong commitment to the future of the Bar.

Orlagh Kelly: And that's wonderful to hear and I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I'm wondering of course the next question that comes to mind is given all of that, are there areas that possibly are gaps in how the profession thinks?

Mark Neale: Well, there are all, yes, I mean, because that is all inspired individualism. It's kind of individual barristers, you know, sacrificing time for the future of the profession.

But the profession also depends on leadership, leadership to promote equality and diversity, leadership to ensure that the investment is there. For example, investment in artificial intelligence, which will cut the costs and improve the quality of barrister's services for the future. Leadership on combating sexual harassment and bullying which continues to be a significant challenge for the Bar.

And leadership in all those areas on growth, on equality, depends on, primarily on chambers and employers because it's chambers that do the recruitment, it's chambers that progress the careers of barristers, it's chambers that put in place the policies that are necessary to promote equality and to ensure that barristers who experience harassment are properly protected and that issues of harassment are properly investigated.

And my challenge to the Bar, as I said in my farewell speech, is that I don't think that at the moment chambers are performing those roles effectively for two main reasons. One, because there are just too many chambers. There are 450 chambers. Many of them are small and lack the critical mass to be effective in all the areas I've described.

But also I think there is a governance issue about who exactly is accountable for ensuring that chambers, policies and practices match up to the best.

Orlagh Kelly: And what advice would you give chambers to help counter those issues?

Mark Neale: Well, I think there are two areas where I think the Bar needs to be self-critical. One is around that issue of fragmentation. I think there's a strong case for consolidation among chambers. I don't think the regulator should drive that, but I think the regulator should call out the issue. At the moment 450 chambers means that there is a lot of duplication of cost but nevertheless many chambers that are still underpowered in the areas that I've described and I think consolidation critical mass is needed to address that.

and the other area where I would advocate changes in terms of governance. Chambers are at the moment loose confederations of the barristers who compose them. I think that those confederations, the tenants, need to empower the head of chambers to provide stronger leadership and personally, I would advocate remunerating the role of the head of chambers so that he or she does not have divided accountabilities, both to their career and to their chambers. I think it would be sensible if the head of chambers were able to focus on the wellbeing of the chambers, the investments that are needed to ensure growth, ensuring that the proper policies and processes are in place.

Orlagh Kelly: And that's an interesting point and I haven't necessarily heard anyone make that point before and I don't know that any set of chambers remunerates their head of chambers to my knowledge but wouldn't you say that that is the role of the CEO or the senior clerk or the chambers director and that they're getting paid to do that?

Mark Neale: Clerks and chief executives are very important, yes. Not all chambers though Orlagh, have, certainly chief executives. I think a chief executive is the exception rather than the rule and where a chief executive is lacking I think there is a role for the head of chambers. If you want an analogy the Bar Council provides you with quite a good one. The chair of the Bar Council and indeed the deputy chair are both remunerated positions for the year in which the individual holds that role so they can take time out from their professional career as a barrister to perform the important roles that the chair of the Bar Council and the deputy chair perform and I'm kind of saying I think that their head of chambers role is analogous while somebody is holding that role they should have remuneration from the chamber so that they can really focus on the responsibilities that go with it.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I can certainly see your thoughts behind that and understand it. I think it might be controversial, but we'll push it out and see what the response is.

Mark Neale: That, I think, what the regulator is there for, to say controversial things, particularly when they retire. But to be fair, I've said the same things, well in post as well.

Orlagh Kelly: Particularly when they retire. Absolutely. And speaking of controversial, there is, course, I guess we live in a world where there's a cancel culture. There's there is an expectation that people behave in certain ways and if they don't that other social metrics that they can be cancelled through maybe complaints to their regulator and I know that the Bar Standards Board has dealt with some of that and often I see a call that for example barristers shouldn't represent large oil suppliers etc if in fact that they're supportive of making changes for benefit of the climate.

And that course is difficult because I having trained as a barrister in the early noughties and practised for 12 years. I'm incredibly aware that you don't get to choose who your client is and that you have to represent them to the best of your ability. And when I was in practice, the main question I would ever get asked, and I think every barrister has experienced this, is, but how do you represent your client if you know that they're guilty? And that probably back at that stage was if they were guilty, of some kind of a criminal act or something along those lines on a micro level.

But of course in the world that we live in now with an incredible amount of social media and a large, I guess London based particularly, sets of chambers and barristers who are dealing with worldwide issues, you can see the media calling for barristers not to represent them. And the Cab Rank Rule gets mentioned but I don't think that most of the outside world understands or appreciates it.

Orlagh Kelly: What's your thoughts on that? A, the call for barristers to be cancelled if they want to represent people that not everybody agrees with and the Cab rank Rule, does it continue to serve a purpose?

Mark Neale: Well, I think it does, Orlagh, and I think that public social media pressure on barristers is very insidious. And to my mind, the principle of non-discrimination and the cab rank rule that gives it operational effect is absolutely the key to access to justice. It ensures that barristers do not come under insupportable pressure for representing people, law, causes that some in society would think are against the public interest.

Listeners to this podcast will all have differing views about where the public interest lies, are people in our society who would much prefer it if asylum seekers were not represented.

There are people in our society who would much prefer it if fossil fuel companies were not represented. But I think the rule of law demands that... asylum seekers and fossil fuel companies are indeed effectively represented and that barristers should not be deterred from doing so by public pressure and the cab rank rule is an important safeguard. I think it's also a safeguard against barristers in the commercial Bar coming under pressure from companies who they represented not to represent their competitors.

So I think it does serve an important purpose and that purpose is safeguarding access to justice.

Orlagh Kelly: I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with that. What comes to mind of course is what I see also in the Twitter sphere and all of that is...what would appear to me to be an increased number of individuals reporting barristers to the Bar Standards Board, not by virtue of the fact that the barrister has represented them and they're unhappy with that, but rather they're unhappy with what the barrister stands for, possibly in a personal life and not really anything to do with their barrister career, but it could be described as...another form of cancellation or somewhat warfare by reporting barristers to their regulator in an effort to cause difficulties. What's your thoughts on that?

Mark Neale: Well first of all, there is quite rightly a very high bar to regulatory interference with free speech and I think that's quite rightly the case. However, what I would say to barristers is that they need to maintain their independence.

and in particular they need to maintain the confidence of all sections of the community that they can expect the Bar and individual barristers to represent them effectively if they need the barrister's advocacy skills and I think that barristers who do weigh in to highly contested issues in very vehement terms, know, put at risk that public confidence in the independence of the Bar. So I would certainly recommend to barristers that they engage in public debate but they do so in measured terms that do not cause sections of the community to feel that that barrister or the Bar generally could not effectively represent them.

Orlagh Kelly: With a caveat, I assume that barristers are entitled to their own political opinions.

Mark Neale: Absolutely, absolutely, but express them in measured terms, not in vehement terms that undermine the confidence of some sections of our society.

Orlagh Kelly: And the Bar Standards Board has recently released some guidance around social media and when you will actually accept a complaint from a complainant. Do you want to speak a little bit about why those changes were made and how they affect barristers individually?

Mark Neale: Yes, I mean, we receive significant numbers of complaints every year about barristers use of social media because the views the barrister has expressed are disliked by the person making the complaint. We do look at all of those complaints and assess them appropriately against our rules.

but where the complaint is not being made by somebody who's personally affected.

I think it is reasonable for us not to provide the kind of in-depth explanation of our decisions that we would provide to somebody making a report or a complaint about to barrister where their own personal interests are engaged. And that's the change we've made, not a change to our obligation to properly assess the report, but a change to whether we'll provide a detailed assessment of our thinking.

Orlagh Kelly: Okay. And moving away from the barristers and how they get regulated and thinking more about judging the regulator, so to speak, because people like to do that. How can the public, I guess, as the first audience, but secondly, the barristers professionally understand or decide or judge whether the regulator at the Bar Standards Board is doing a good job?

Mark Neale: Well, first of all, it is absolutely right that the regulator should be judged by the profession, but also by the wider public. And I think the regulator really should be judged in two distinct dimensions. One is around how far the regulator is effectively protecting the public interest, foreseeing risks to the public interest, rising at the Bar and addressing those risks.

And the second is how operationally effective the regulator is in discharging its kind of key regulatory functions using the tools that the regulator has to protect public interest, tools around enforcement, tools around authorisation, tools around qualification.

I think we get judged much more on those operational measures than we do on the former on the public protection measures. I think that's unfortunate because actually, you know, it is the public interest that we're ultimately there to serve. And I think in my time, we've done a great deal to bring into the public domain, you know, important measures around public confidence in the profession, public confidence in regulation which provide a useful insight into whether the wider society has confidence in barristers and confidence in the Bar Standards Board as the regulator.

Orlagh Kelly: Now enforcement timelines have been a persistent challenge for the Standards Board. I think it would be remiss of me not to mention that. Can you give any indication from internally in Bar Standards Board what drives that? What's an honest answer to someone who says this is just not good enough, barristers shouldn't have to wait this long to have a process taken and decided?

Mark Neale: The honest answer is that we do need to be faster in taking forward enforcement work, Orlagh.

But it's also very important to understand that there is a balance to be struck here between speed and the quality of decision making. And the Bar Standards Board has always set a very high priority on ensuring that our decisions are fair and proportionate. And we have...very much succeeded in maintaining a high quality of decision making. That's not just me saying it, you know, our decisions are all independently audited and we consistently get very high marks on that.

Very few of our decisions are overturned in the courts and just imagine the reaction from the profession if we were being overturned week in, week out in the courts. The price of that is meticulous work by colleagues who undertake enforcement work, particularly investigative work, and that does take time.

We have been improving significantly our productivity and timeliness but there's still a little way to go and if I may say so there is help that the profession itself could give us, because some of the delay, not all of it, but some of the delay does arise from barristers themselves looking for extra time or pleading ill health as a reason for not moving enforcement work forward as quickly as it could and should be.

Orlagh Kelly: So you would say, I guess, cooperation from the barristers themselves in a timely fashion would assist.

Mark Neale: It certainly would. There's an obligation to be cooperative with the regulator and I'd like to see that observed in the spirit as well as in the letter and in particular I would like to see barristers cooperating with enforcement work while also continuing to work at the Bar. What I find difficult to accept is circumstances where the barrister is continuing to work, but he's finding all kinds of reasons why he or she can't cooperate with us to resolve an enforcement case.

Orlagh Kelly: Okay, and I think that's understandable that that might be happening. I think the other side of that must be however barristers who have been found to have not done anything wrong ultimately in your decision making process will suffer quite a bit of stress and anxiety. I would imagine going through this process, do you put in place anything to support the barristers?

Mark Neale: We do, we absolutely do. And it's very important that we do so. So we are always very concerned to ensure the well-being of barristers who are subject to enforcement proceedings. We completely understand that it is stressful. And we don't put in...proper pressure on barristers. But in many cases, cases turn on factual matters which could relatively straightforwardly be resolved and where that's the case, I'd like to see those cases moved forward to a fair conclusion promptly.

Orlagh Kelly: Okay. And so turning to the future, I think, you know, there's two things that come to mind. The criminal Bar. We're in a world where there's the potential for removal of jury trials in a considerable number of what would normally have been cases that would have commanded and demanded a jury trial.

There's a criminal Bar and a criminal justice system that I think most people will agree continues to be underfunded from the infrastructure of the actual court settings to the ability and availability of advocates, solicitors and barristers. Cases being cancelled, you know, an incredibly chaotic and very, very difficult work environment for any professional to do a good job in what is very stressful and difficult work and very important work.

What do you, in the six years that you've seen it, and bearing in mind of course your background having worked for the government for a very long period of time, what is the answer to this and is there any possible solutions that would continue to give access to justice to the people that require it, but it would probably accept the contribution of the professions and the professionals who are currently really sacrificing their own personal lives to do this?

Mark Neale: As a general point, Orlagh, I would say that there is next to no workforce planning for the Bar. I think this is an area where the Ministry of Justice, the profession, the Bar council and the regulator, the Bar standards board should be working together.

the future supply of barristers is largely being determined by lots of cumulative decisions by chambers and employers about how many pupillage places and whether those cumulative decisions summed to the right answer either overall or in particular specialisms I think is very uncertain. And the criminal Bar is quite a good example of that because what you can see at the moment is a slightly disturbing trend where there is a hollowing out of the profession in the middle years of practice. Increasing amounts of criminal work are being undertaken by barristers with fewer than three years experience and barristers with more than 28 years experience.

Now that I think does spell trouble further down the track when some of those barristers towards the end of their careers retire if we're not putting in place the pupillage places for the future and we're not ensuring that you know there are the financial incentives to continue at the criminal Bar for younger criminal Bar barristers. So it is I think a disturbing picture where you know the Ministry of Justice, the profession and the regulator need to work together.

Orlagh Kelly: And so that, mean, that feels like that's going to go off the edge of a cliff at some stage and as professional and as intelligent and as academically capable as barristers are, let's assume that everybody is, having gotten this far. I can remember being three years qualified and I'm not sure that I would have been able to do a complex murder trial or defend someone appropriately. I think it's asking an awful lot of someone who's probably still in their 20s to be able to take that on. There is obviously for everybody working in many parts of the profession the thought process around vicarious trauma and the fact that they're dealing with very very difficult, traumatic evidence, cases, clients who are also suffering trauma. There's not a lot of support around that.

In my opinion that I have seen where that's available and one would suggest that the hollowing out as you indicate is not just the financial almost penalties that the professions are and professionals are having to take on board with the lack of payments and lack of remuneration but it's also the lack of support in terms of dealing with this type of work and so whenever you mention workforce planning that's not necessarily a phrase I would have heard very much at the Bar.

And I guess it's interesting to me to indicate that actually there should be a helicopter view of what does the criminal justice system require in terms of resources and that everyone, all the stakeholders should make a decision and implement it. It does feel like that's not happening and from, and whilst you're suggesting that it should happen, I'm not getting any sense from you that that's a plan that anyone's taken forward, is it?

Mark Neale: There is no plan at the moment, no. And I mean, I think it's a good illustration of one of the points that I made right at the beginning of our conversation. A lot of regulation is focused on the conduct of individual barristers, but much less so on the degree to which the profession is going to be able to serve the public interest in future. And obviously a big dimension of the Bar's ability to serve the public interest is whether there are going to be enough barristers

Not just in the round but also specialism by specialism and I think the Ministry of Justice, the Bar Council and the Bar Standards Board do need to be across that to a greater extent than they have been in the past.

Orlagh Kelly: Well, we leave that there, Mark, because it sounds like there's a lot of work to be done. And as you say, no plan, which is which is very disconcerting and I'm sure concerning for everyone, really.

And the other, of course, the other thing coming along, because the criminal Bar is a long tradition and has long served that, you know, the system selflessly normally. But we've now moved in a world of robots and artificial intelligence. We have had cases in England and Wales where there have been publicly named pupils, early qualified barristers and chambers named for misuse of AI in the professional sense. And I wanted to know where you think AI is going to land, removing the fear and the headlines and the clickbait about AI taking our jobs.

Where do you think it lands and how does it affect the profession?

Mark Neale: So first thing to say, the good news is that the Standards Board will be publishing guidance to the profession on the use of artificial intelligence this spring, which has been worked up in partnership with the Bar Council and I think will be a very positive development. But what lies behind that? Well, what lies behind that, I think Orlagh is the need to ensure the safe adoption of artificial intelligence in the interests of better service by barristers and more cost effective service by barristers.

And I have no doubt that AI can be adopted safely by the Bar. I think it has tremendous potential to take out some of the administrative tasks. Take the criminal Bar, for example, in drawing up timelines, which are often critical, in any criminal case, in summarizing documents, in laying the foundations of legal research.

But, you know, very, very important proviso, the barrister must continue to be the decision taker and the barrister remains responsible for the advice which he or she gives to the client and his or her advocacy on behalf of the client.

So if a barrister is using AI, they absolutely do need to ensure that where they've used AI to facilitate research, they are actually doing the due diligence to ensure that the cases that AI is flagging are real cases, not fictitious ones, and that their skeleton arguments do stand up to professional scrutiny.

So yes AI is a tool but no not AI substituting for the barrister's professional judgment.

Orlagh Kelly: And so, I mean, you started to make your point there, and there's an opportunity for AI to create more cost effectiveness for the public. And of course, that's because it can help reduce the work possibly and manual and administrative time that a barrister would have to put in potentially a summary together or chronology. But as we all know, AI lies, it hallucinates. And so to some extent, one could argue, well, you can get it to do it, but then you have to check every single thing that it says and probably have to fix it.

So does that really reduce time? I had an interesting conversation with a really impressive chambers in Manchester where they're carrying out an experiment. And I hope to get that chambers director on to talk to us, but they're getting barristers to do it, to manage a file with no AI help and then with AI help and then compare and contrast and I thought that was a wonderful and diligent way to assess whether AI can bring value or not.

Mark Neale: Yeah, I think that's great.

Orlagh Kelly: So I'm looking forward to hearing exactly what comes out of that experiment. But in the meantime, we can't rely on AI and whereas in a world where you're maybe creating a little bit of marketing copy and you can check it quite quickly, it's not the same as pulling together legal advice for people. And so there does seem to be a little bit of a way before barristers could really rely on it.

Mark Neale: Well, I mean, first of all, I think the experiment you've described, Orlagh is great. I think that's exactly the kind of experiment that we should be welcoming and promoting. But second point, AI is developing all the time. And one of the developments I would certainly like to see is chambers developing their own AI applications, that are quite apart from the general tools out there on the internet which anybody can access but that of course does require investment.

And that brings me back to one of my earlier points about the very fragmented nature of the Bar at the moment. There are not many sets of chambers that can afford to make that investment in a bespoke AI tool in which you can have much greater confidence because it's trained specifically on your chambers, business and cases. And the Bar Standards Board did a great piece of research around about this time last year which did show that the big obstacle to the take-up and investment in AI of that kind is the lack of critical mass, the lack of scale at the Bar to put the necessary investment in.

Orlagh Kelly: And it is, it's a niche sector.

So in technology companies, and I know this well with my own background, technology companies find it difficult to justify creating products and services for the Bar because it's a very, very, very small industry compared to where other potential revenue generating opportunities exist, so to some extent, it's underserved them by virtue of that, which is just the nature of the beast, I think, in some capacity. if there was a way that the chambers could come together.

Mark Neale: Exactly and the Bar Standards Board and the Bar Council again another good example of collaboration have you know set up a joint working group to look at some of the ways we can help overcome the problems of scale with you know call-off contracts and guidance for example.

Orlagh Kelly: And so then there's one piece though that, and I don't know what the answer to this is, so I'm simply interested in your opinion is, if we've got barristers that have gone through... and qualified and practiced in the traditional way without AI. And they've gotten to where they are, maybe 10 or 15 years qualified, and they can read, you know, a bundle and understand the facts of the case and apply the law because they've had to do it the hard way.

But there's a generation of barristers coming through that will soon be AI natives and won't have had necessarily that same writing things out and learning things that the hard way and the manual way that it often takes years to get expertise and skill.

How do those barristers actually ever get the expertise that would be required? And I think it's happening in all professions, but I'm interested in your opinion.

Mark Neale: I think that's a great example. Orlagh of the case for training, in-service training. And I know that the Inns are already looking at the provision of exactly that kind of training in the effective use of AI and the due diligence that's needed for barristers who are in mid-career. And I think the Bar Standards Board and the profession, again, need to be collaborative here and flag the need for that kind of training and encourage barristers to take it up.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah, it's certainly an interesting development that I don't know that anyone knows the answer to right now, but I guess we'll see in five years where it all takes us. So Mark, we're coming to the end of our conversation, but I am interested to know, looking back now from your first day at the Bar Standards Board, you've had about two weeks since you've moved on and retired, and I know that you've other projects in the education sector and the pipeline. Is there anything you would do differently?

Mark Neale: Well, there are lots of individual decisions that, you know, looking back, I would have taken differently. I gave the example of the exams we put on during Covid where we definitely could have made them, you know, more hospitable to disabled students. And we learned some important lessons there. But generally speaking, Orlagh I think, you know, I would kind of want to adhere to the broad approach that we adopted namely both to ensure that the Bar Standards Board provided a robust challenge on public interest issues while also ensuring that we were exercising efficiently and effectively our regulatory functions. I think those are the kind of two things that the Bar Standards Board will need to do for the future and there are good foundations there.

Orlagh Kelly: Very good. Well, listen, congratulations again on your retirement. Thank you. That's been a wonderful conversation, a lot to think about. I'm sure the audience will be interested in your thoughts both about the six years that you were there, but also what's coming in the future. And thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Mark Neale: Thank you all, I've enjoyed our conversation.