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You arrived at this page by selecting:When a client has a solicitor, sometimes the solicitor will recommend that the client engages a barrister, sometimes called counsel. This might be for a specialist opinion about something or to argue a case in court, for example.
Counsel will charge professional fees just like the solicitor does, but by the long and ancient tradition of the legal profession, barristers tend to send their bills to the solicitor, not direct to the client. The solicitor then includes the barrister's fees on his own bill, that he then sends out to the client as an expense.
Solicitors sometimes also consult counsel on matters, but not on the client's behalf, but on their own behalf. In this event the barrister's fees are not rechargeable to the client, because counsel is not acting for the client, it is acting for the solicitors. However, because the barrister in that situation is effectively acting as if he were one of the solicitor's firm's in-house lawyers the solicitors are entitled to charge for the barrister as part of their own fees, a bit like sub-contracting. In this situation therefore barrister's fees might not be separately specified on the solicitor's bill, because the barrister's fees are not fees to the client, they are fees to the solicitor, just the same way as the salaries to the staff in the solicitor's office.
