British Virgin Islands Bar Association

The BVI Bar Association is a voluntary membership organisation that regulates the legal profession in the British Virgin Islands. It was founded in 1976, but residency requirements for members mean that not all members of the British Virgin Islands legal profession are members. The British Virgin Islands has a fused profession and the BVI Bar Association regulates both barristers and solicitors within the jurisdiction. The Association has no statutory powers at present.

Admission

Unlike most national bar associations, the BVI Bar Association does not represent all legal professionals within the jurisdiction. It is a voluntary organisation, and legal practitioners are not eligible to join until they have been resident in the Territory for one year (unless they hold Belonger status). This is designed to prevent flooding of the association by members of "transient" lawyers, who fly in, get admitted, and then leave the Territory and purport to practise British Virgin Islands law from overseas. Nonetheless, the Association is generally understood to speak for the profession as a whole within the jurisdiction, and frequently addresses the Territory's legislature on that basis.

Legal Professions Bill

In June 2006 the British Virgin Islands legislature prepared a draft Legal Professions Bill which, if passed into law, would fundamentally recast the regulating of the profession within the jurisdiction. Although the Bill recognises the continuing existence of the BVI Bar Association, key functions such as ethics, professional discipline, admission to practice and the validation of training institutions and pupillages would be delegated to a newly formed 7 person "British Virgin Islands General Legal Council". The Bill is perceived as controversial, partly because of the level of influence and control which the government would reserve to itself over the legal profession, and partly because the new admission criteria are perceived to discriminate against British educated lawyers. [Under the Bill, applicants who have trained at the University of the West Indies and a West Indian regional law school are admitted as of right even if they have never actually practised and without the need to serve pupillage, but applicants who have qualified as barristers or solicitors in the United Kingdom need to practise for 5 years before being eligible for admission (under current BVI law they may be admitted as of right as soon as they qualify in the United Kingdom).] The controversy attached to the Bill was not lessened by the unusually short period (28 days) between the Bill being made available for public review, and its first reading by the legislature. Ultimately the bill was shelved because the controversy made it impossible to pass before the holding of the British Virgin Islands general election, 2007, which saw a change of government, but the new government has promised to review the position and present a new bill.

Officers

External links

* [http://www.bvibarassociation.com/ The BVI Bar Association]

Footnotes