Many professions, particularly those requiring special qualifications to perform and which are of particular importance to wider society (such as medicine) are subject to the oversight of regulatory bodies. These include:
- the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)
- the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
- the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- and the Bar Standards Board (BSB)
If these bodies receive a complaint from a member of the public, or need to conduct a kind of disciplinary hearing then they may require the services of a barrister, either to review their evidence or to represent one or other party in court. A growing number of criminal barristers take on work of this kind in addition to more general criminal work. Because of the close-proximity of this work to more general crime, practitioners sometimes refer to it as ‘quasi-criminal’.