Solicitor vs barrister

Conduct of litigation versus right of audience

Six activities are reserved under section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007, meaning only an authorised person may carry them out. Two of them decide who does what once a dispute reaches a court in England and Wales.

A right of audience is the right to appear before and address a court, including calling and examining witnesses. The conduct of litigation is issuing proceedings, prosecuting or defending them and everything ancillary, both defined in Schedule 2.

Neither belongs to one profession. Schedule 4 makes the Law Society and the General Council of the Bar approved regulators for the identical five reserved activities, so the difference sits in what each authorises its own people to do. A solicitor gets the conduct of litigation with the practising certificate. A barrister must apply to the Bar Standards Board for authorisation to conduct litigation, added as an extension to existing practising rights.

Task	Solicitor at a firm	Self-employed barrister
Issuing the claim and filing at court	Yes, by default	Only with BSB litigation authorisation
Holding your money in a client account	Yes	Not permitted
Appearing in the County Court or Family Court	Yes	Yes
Appearing in the Crown Court or High Court	Only with higher rights	Yes
Written opinion on the merits	Yes	Yes, the classic instruction

Higher rights of audience and the higher courts

The Solicitors Regulation Authority splits the courts in two. The lower courts are the magistrates’ courts, the County Court and the Family Court. The higher courts are the Crown Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, where the SRA states that only barristers and solicitors with higher rights of audience can represent someone.

That qualification is rarer than the phrase suggests. As at June 2026, 7,099 practising solicitors held higher rights, 3,012 for civil work only and 2,792 for crime only, out of 178,428 practising solicitors in England and Wales. On the other side, 18,491 barristers were in practice in 2025, 14,849 of them self-employed, among them 2,055 self-employed King’s Counsel.

In the higher courts the choice is counsel or a solicitor from that small group. Tribunals split both ways. Upper-tier tribunals and some first-tier ones, immigration and asylum among them, need a barrister, solicitor or CILEx advocate. Other first-tier tribunals allow non-lawyers, including trade union officials appearing for members in the employment tribunal.

The two routes to a barrister, and what Public Access changes

Two routes exist and most people take the first, through a solicitor who chooses and instructs the barrister and stays your main contact. The second is Public Access, which a barrister must complete extra training to offer.

Public Access changes three things at once. The BSB states there is no legal aid on it, so going direct gives up any legal aid entitlement. The barrister cannot hold your money. And unless that barrister holds the litigation authorisation, sending documents to the court and tracking deadlines falls to you.

Price transparency, the SRA list against the BSB list

Both regulators force price transparency, on different lists of work, set by the SRA for solicitors’ firms and by the BSB for Public Access barristers. Where the two lists overlap, a quote can be compared against a quote.

Service	Solicitors’ firms must publish	Public Access barristers must publish
Employment tribunal, unfair or wrongful dismissal	Yes	Yes
Immigration, excluding asylum	Yes	First-tier Tribunal appeals
Licensing for business premises	Yes	Yes
Motoring offences in the magistrates’ court	Summary only	Yes
Buying a house, residential	Yes	No
Uncontested probate	Yes	No
Business debt recovery up to £100,000	Yes	No
Personal injury claims	No	Yes
Financial disputes after divorce	No	Yes
Inheritance Act advice	No	Yes
Winding-up petitions	No	Yes

Guideline hourly rates for solicitors, and no published rate for counsel

The guideline hourly rates approved by the Master of the Rolls took effect on 1 January 2026, an uplift of 2.28% on the 2025 figures, and courts use them when assessing costs.

Grade	London 1	London 2	London 3	National 1	National 2
A, over 8 years	£579	£422	£319	£295	£288
B, over 4 years	£393	£327	£262	£247	£247
C, other solicitors and legal executives	£305	£276	£209	£201	£200
D, trainees and paralegals	£210	£157	£146	£142	£142

The gov.uk table puts Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester Central, Nottingham City, Birmingham Inner, Cardiff Inner, Leeds Inner and Newcastle City in National 1, while Sheffield, Leicester, Coventry and the outer parts of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds sit in National 2. Grade A is £295 in Manchester Central and £288 in Manchester Outer, worth checking before comparing two quotes from the Manchester list.

For counsel there is no equivalent. The Master of the Rolls’ statement records that the Civil Justice Council has established a working group to examine whether guideline rates can be produced for counsel’s fees, so no published benchmark exists yet. The BSB confirms it from the other side, that there is no standard price and each barrister sets their own, by fixed fee, hourly rate or conditional fee. That leaves the solicitor’s hourly rate as the only published number to work from.

Client money, insurance and who you complain to

Barristers are not allowed to hold client money. With a solicitor in the case, the solicitor pays the barrister and the fee appears inside the overall bill. Without one, the barrister or chambers invoices you directly. All barristers must carry professional indemnity insurance.

Service complaints about either profession go to the Legal Ombudsman, which lists the Bar Standards Board and the SRA among the regulators whose providers it can investigate. The provider’s own complaints procedure comes first, and the ombudsman can take the complaint once eight weeks have passed without resolution, ordinarily within six months of the written response and no later than a year from the act. The award limit is £50,000 under the scheme rules.

One scheme rule catches people out. Where a barrister was instructed by a solicitor for a consumer, the consumer can complain but the solicitor cannot, so it has to come from you, on the same clock as a complaint about the solicitor. Conduct concerns go to the BSB instead, and a barrister may hand instructions back after agreeing to act, including where the fee offered is not a proper one or the client has not paid after a warning.

Solicitor and counsel across the three UK legal systems

The word for the court specialist changes at each border, and so does the ceiling on compensation.

	England and Wales	Scotland	Northern Ireland
The court specialist	Barrister	Advocate, or counsel	Barrister
Their regulator	Bar Standards Board	Faculty of Advocates	Bar of Northern Ireland
The solicitor’s regulator	Solicitors Regulation Authority	Law Society of Scotland	Law Society of Northern Ireland
They work from	Chambers, or alone	Stables, with an Advocates’ Clerk	The Bar Library, Belfast
Solicitor with extended court rights	Higher rights of audience	Solicitor advocate	Solicitors appear in some courts
Direct route without a solicitor	Public Access, if trained for it	Bodies with direct access rights	Professional bodies only, now suspended
Service complaints	Legal Ombudsman	Scottish Legal Complaints Commission	Bar or Solicitors Complaints Committee
Maximum compensation	£50,000	£20,000	£5,000 plus £5,000

Advocates and the Court of Session in Scotland

Scotland’s court specialist is an advocate. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service says advocates are members of the Faculty of Advocates and have a status and function corresponding to that of a barrister in England.

Every practising advocate is an independent sole practitioner who cannot enter a partnership, most working from stables served by an Advocates’ Clerk. The Faculty is a referral bar, instructed by solicitors and by bodies holding direct access rights, so there is no consumer equivalent of Public Access, and no set fees.

The Scottish dividing line is a money figure, not a court name. Under section 39 of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, civil proceedings whose aggregate value, excluding interest and expenses, does not exceed £100,000 may be brought only in the sheriff court, where any solicitor has rights of audience and counsel is a choice. Above that line the choice reopens, between the sheriff court and the Court of Session in Parliament House, Edinburgh, where only an advocate or a solicitor advocate can appear.

The solicitor advocate is the Scottish counterpart to higher rights of audience, created by section 24 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 for solicitors who satisfy the Law Society of Scotland on evidence, pleading, procedure and sheriff court experience. Since 1990 they have shared the High Court of Justiciary with advocates.

Complaints about either go to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, which covers firms, solicitors, advocates, commercial attorneys and licensed conveyancers. The lawyer or firm gets at least 28 days to respond first. The time limit since 1 April 2023 is three years, and compensation is capped at £20,000 under section 10 of the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007.

Barristers and the Bar Library in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland keeps the England and Wales vocabulary and changes almost everything under it. The court specialist is still a barrister, but solicitors are regulated by the Law Society of Northern Ireland under the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 rather than the Legal Services Act 2007, subject to the oversight of the Lady Chief Justice.

There is no consumer route to a barrister at all. The Bar of Northern Ireland is a referral Bar, so the usual route is through a solicitor, and Direct Professional Access is open only to professional bodies approved by the Bar Council, a process now under review with applications suspended. The cab rank rule puts a barrister under a professional duty to take the case whoever the client is, subject to availability and conflicts of interest.

There is no chambers system either. Barristers work from the Bar Library at 91 Chichester Street inside Belfast’s Royal Courts of Justice, where consultations are pre-arranged rather than dropped in on, and over 100 King’s Counsel practise here, normally leading the team in serious or complex cases.

Complaints do not reach an ombudsman. The Legal Complaints and Regulation Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 created a Bar Complaints Committee and a Solicitors Complaints Committee, and sections 19 and 38 cap compensation at £5,000 for loss caused by negligence plus £5,000 for other loss, inconvenience or distress. Legal aid is separate again. Every application must be made by a solicitor, any contribution under Representation in the Lower Courts is no more than £134, and Representation in the Higher Courts allows a solicitor and sometimes a barrister, decided by the Legal Services Agency Northern Ireland.