Solicitors are now able to apply to become senior counsel, under changes passed in legislation five years ago now coming into force that will overturn 300-year-old rules. Up to now the right to be a senior counsel was only given by the government to practicing barristers, following a decision to grant so-called “patents of precedence”. However, a notice seeking applications from junior barristers and solicitors appeared on the website of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) earlier this week. Solicitors chosen will still be solicitors, and not barristers. “But I know some will [be chosen], and there will be great interest in seeing who the first Irish solicitor in history to be made a senior counsel will be,” the director-general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, told The Irish Times.

Source: The Irish Times July 02, 2020 00:00 UTC