Committee vacancies

Services Appointment Panel: One Vacancy

One vacancy for a chambers professional in a senior role (e.g. Senior Clerk or Practice Manager, Chief Executive, Chambers Director etc), with specialist knowledge of alternative dispute resolution and, in particular, arbitration and mediation.

The Services Appointment Panel (the “Panel”) was introduced to the Bar Council in January 2021 to support the administration of the organisation’s Appointments Service, which replaced the now defunct Arbitration and Mediation Services. The purpose of the Appointments Service is to enable parties to ask the Chair of the Bar to appoint a barrister to act as an arbitrator, mediator, or expert in respect of a dispute between themselves and one or more others.

The Panel meets two times per annum and reports directly to the Bar Council’s Bar Representation Committee. Supported by the Head of Services, its main purposes are to:

• work in rotation to draw up a shortlist of appointees for the Chair of the Bar to select from, having first received an anonymous summary of the relevant dispute from the Services Team.
• assist the Services Team with the creation of annual marketing plans for the promotion of the Participant Databases, which will contain the names and contact details of those barristers who are happy to be appointed, on a pro bono or paid basis, depending on the source of the dispute.
• advise the Services Team on the effectiveness of any third party (including chambers) alternative dispute resolution clauses that seek for an appointment to be made by the Chair of the Bar.
• keep under review the documentation and website content associated with the Bar Council’s Appointment Service.

Following the recent departure of one of the Panel’s members, the Bar Council would be interested to hear from any chambers professionals who have demonstrable experience of assessing instructions for arbitrators, mediators and/or experts, and allocating work accordingly.

How to apply

Applicants should send a copy of their CV accompanied by a short written statement of no more than 200 words setting out their suitability for the role and describing their skills and experience to the Bar Council’s Head of Services, Michelle Moxon, at [email protected].uk.

It is important that the Bar Council should reflect the diversity of the society that the Bar serves, and applications from all sections of the community are encouraged.

The deadline for applications is 10:00 on Monday 24 June 2024.