Transparency Standards – Serjeants' Inn Chambers

Serjeants’ Inn specialises in important, high profile medical, police, regulatory, criminal and public law cases, often involving political, ethical or social issues. We accept instructions from solicitors, whether working in private practice or in-house, and from individuals who work in entities which the Bar Standards Board has licensed to instruct barristers directly (Licensed Access). Some of our barristers are authorised by the Bar Standards Board to accept instructions directly from members of the public (Public Access).

Full details of how to instruct via Licensed or Public Access are available here. In the case of Public Access you may also be interested in the Public Access Guidance for Lay Clients published by the BSB here.

If you would like advice on which barrister would be appropriate to instruct, please click here to contact a member of our Clerking Team who will be able to assist you in choosing the most suitable Counsel for your case. If you would like to print a PDF copy of our Transparency Standards page, please click here.

OUR SPECIALISMS

The areas of law in which members of chambers most commonly provide legal services are:

The most commonly provided legal services provided by members of chambers in these areas of practice can be accessed by clicking on the relevant pages for each area above. Further details can be found in the profiles for our individual barristers which are available here.

STANDARD HOURLY RATES

Fees under Chambers’ standard terms of work will be calculated by reference to the amount of time reasonably required to supply the services and a reasonable hourly rate, taking into account all the circumstances of the case. The services provided by our barristers are generally charged on a time basis by reference to an agreed hourly rate. Please click on this link to download  Members of Chambers’ current standard hourly rates.

We can also provide a fixed price if appropriate: for example, we usually charge fixed-rate fees for advocacy work (especially for court work).

Quotations

Potential clients may contact our clerking team on 0207 427 5000 or clerks@serjeantsinn.com to obtain an estimate for legal services.

Timescales

Stages and timescales of a case will vary depending on factors such as barristers’ availability, the area of law, complexity of your case, the amount of documentation, witnesses and experts involved, as well as any unforeseeable external factors.

All fees quoted can change depending on the requirements of the case and any changes will be discussed in advance. Capacity, illness, availability and unforeseeable external factors might influence timescales and costs of your case as all barristers undertake professional work personally.

Our clerking team will liaise with you in relation to the timescale the barrister has advised and will monitor this to ensure deadlines and service standards are met.

Barristers’ Register

Our barristers are self-employed individuals,  each of whom is regulated directly by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). The Bar Council describes barristers as “specialist legal advisers and court room advocates. They are independent, objective and trained to advise clients on the strengths and weaknesses of their case. They have specialist knowledge and experience in and out of court, which can make a substantial difference to the outcome of a case.” Further details about the role of a barrister are available on the Bar Council website here.

The Barristers’ Register, which may be found here  on the BSB’s website, is an online database which displays details of all barristers who are authorised to practise in England and Wales and who hold a current practising certificate.  The Register displays the dates for which a barrister’s practising certificate is valid.  It includes information about barristers’ practising status, the reserved legal activities they are authorised to undertake and whether they have been the subject of any disciplinary findings.

Accessibility

We are committed to making sure that our Chambers’ website is as accessible to all as possible.  Our webpages may be viewed on a range of different screen sizes and downloaded as a PDF document by clicking on the PDF icon at the left hand side of this page.  If you would prefer to receive the information from our website in an alternative format, please click here to contact a member of the Client Care Team.

We are happy to make reasonable adjustments in order to improve accessibility for those with disabilities or special requirements.  For further details, please click here.

Comments or Complaints

At Serjeants’ Inn we always aim to provide an exemplary standard of service designed to meet the needs of our professional and lay clients. We are always interested to hear any comments you may have, whether positive or negative, about the service we provide.
If you have a complaint, you are invited to let us know about it as soon as possible so that we can try to resolve it to your satisfaction. It is not necessary for lay clients to involve solicitors in order to make a complaint but they are welcome to do so. Further details on our complaints procedure can be found here.

It is our aim to resolve all complaints through our own procedure, which we hope you will use in order to seek to resolve any complaint you may have. However, if you would rather not use this procedure or are unhappy with the outcome of an investigation, you have the choice of taking your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at any time. Please note that the time limit for lodging a complaint with the Legal Ombudsman is six years from the date of the act or omission about which you are complaining or three years from the date when you could reasonably be expected to have realised that there was a problem. The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are set out below.

The Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6806
Wolverhampton
WV1 9WJ
Tel: 0300 555 0333
E-Mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

The Legal Ombudsman publishes data on all complaints that have been resolved by an ombudsman’s final decision, which can be found on their website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk/raising-standards/data-and-decisions/

This page was last reviewed on 21st June 2021.