Barraj Legal Choosing your lawyer

A barrister or a solicitor?
Different tools.

Both are qualified lawyers, but they do different jobs — and knowing the difference is how you avoid paying for the wrong one.

A solicitor

Runs your matter. Handles the correspondence, manages the file and the deadlines, holds money on your behalf, goes on the court record — and, when specialist advice or a courtroom advocate is needed, instructs a barrister for you.

A barrister

Is the specialist. The advice on where you actually stand, the document drafted to survive a fight, the advocacy on the day. Traditionally you reached one only through a solicitor — paying for the journey.

Direct access changed that. For defined pieces of work — an opinion, a document, a hearing — you can now instruct the barrister yourself: one person, one fixed fee, no chain. The question is no longer “which do I ring first?” but “does my problem need a file run, or a specialist applied?”

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Side by side
Solicitor’s firm
Barraj, direct
Who does the work
A team — often a junior doing the work under a partner’s name.
The barrister you instructed. Twenty years’ call, no delegation.
How fees run
Usually by the hour, at rates set by seniority — plus counsel’s fee on top when a barrister is brought in.
One fixed fee for the piece of work, agreed in writing before it starts.
In court
Instructs a barrister to argue the hearing — a second professional to brief and pay.
Advocacy is the home ground — the person who drafted it argues it.
Running the file
Conducts the litigation: correspondence, filings, deadlines; can hold client money.
You keep conduct; I work behind you at the points that decide it. No client money held.
Best when
The whole matter needs managing end-to-end, for months, by someone else.
The work comes in particles: an opinion, a document, a hearing, a year of cover.
And sometimes the answer is a solicitor

Document-heavy litigation that needs a run file, a conveyancing completion, legal aid, or simply wanting someone else to carry the whole thing — those are solicitor jobs, and I will tell you so in the first conversation. It costs nothing to find out which yours is.

The first conversation is free
barraj.co.uk · 029 2264 4149
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Barraj Legal is a trading style of Rhys Johns, a barrister authorised & regulated by the Bar Standards Board. Direct Access (Public Access) instructions accepted. Barristers do not conduct litigation or hold client money; where your matter needs those things, we will say so.