After five years of battling with some of the country's most sophisticated crooks as head of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Rosalind Wright now has a far more tricky opponent in her sights – the Bar Council.

As chair of the Employed Barristers' Committee (EBC), Wright has the unenviable task of improving the profile and status of the employed Bar with its private practice brothers and sisters. Although the 3,000-strong employed Bar accounts for more than a quarter of all practising barristers, when it comes to the attitude of the Bar Council, it has yet to shake off its Cinderella image. Employed barristers have had to fight hard to win 'privileges' such as higher rights of audience and the right to conduct litigation and there is plenty more to be done.

Such a large constituency should have a greater influence than it does, but there are signs that it is, slowly, developing a sense of its own importance and power.

This year saw the first conference of employed barristers draw more than 300 delegates and post Enron the importance of in-house counsel, barristers or otherwise, is growing.

Nevertheless, in the current climate, when the barristers' profession perceives itself to be under threat from all manner of outside influences, from the Office of Fair Trading to solicitor-advocates to 'Tesco lawyers', some at the Bar seem to be somewhat suspicious of what they see as the profession's fifth column.

Wright, who took on her role last year while still head of the SFO, has few illusions about the size of her task. "The difficulty at the moment is that the Bar is extremely defensive about solicitors and rights of audience and they extrapolate that to barristers in employed practice, who they see as challenging their unique niche in legal services," she says.

Of immediate concern is the change in the Bar Council's rules from 2005, which will mean that barristers who do not qualify for full rights of audience will no longer be able to call themselves barristers. Those called before 2000 will be 'grandfathered' in and retain the title, but for those called later, the proposal is causing some alarm.

Qualifying for higher audience rights requires that employed barristers must have completed a pupillage and had three years' advocacy experience. Then the 'four eyes' principle means that there must be at least one other barrister in the same organisation with higher rights.

"It is a bit of cachet for an employer to say they have a barrister on the books – if they just have a legal adviser, what's that?" Wright says. "If they have been employed as a barrister and then have to turn around and say, 'Sorry, I cannot call myself a barrister any more', some of them are worried that they will not be kept on."

This, she adds, sends out the wrong message at a time when the employed Bar is becoming an increasingly attractive option for younger barristers. The withdrawal of the badge of barrister from so many is a symptom of the myopia currently afflicting the Bar that will only hasten its demise as an independent profession, Wright says.

"What gets me about the Bar is that they are totally defensive about everything, to the extent that they are excluding barristers, proper barristers, who are part of their own profession and saying 'you are not allowed to call yourself a barrister'. I do not know why they think that is enhancing the image of the profession, but it is not. They are cutting off their noses to spite their faces."

Wright, who sits on the scholarship committee of the Middle Temple, says she has noticed an increasing level of interest in employed practice from student and younger barristers, as the debts incurred from university and vocational study mount. Greater cross-fertilisation between employed and private practice would strengthen the Bar, at both the commercial and criminal ends of the profession, Wright argues. And with the impending withdrawal of the rank of barrister for those that have not completed traditional pupillages, the time has come for greater co-operation in the training and apprenticeship of young barristers.

The introduction of mandatory funding for pupillages has led to a reduction in the number offered by chambers and there have been some noises at the Bar complaining about the employed sector's failure to plug the gap.

In part, this is due to the rather onerous requirements laid down by the Bar Council, which requires that pupilmasters must have three years' higher rights of audience and have a colleague with the same qualifications. Wright believes it is unrealistic to expect commercial organisations to go to the expense of training new barristers under the existing rules, recommending instead that the traditional pupillage be scrapped and replaced with a broader, more flexible, apprenticeship.

"There are an awful lot of people who take the bar vocational course that cannot find a pupillage," Wright says. "I can understand the Bar Council saying you are not properly qualified if you have not completed all the stages, but there must be some other way of working under supervision that would give you some sort of practical qualification that would be relevant to what you do later in your practice."

As the popularity of the EBC's conference in February showed, there is clearly an appetite for members of the employed Bar to meet one another and for some of form of framework in which to practise.

This is part of the reason for the EBC's first code of guidance for barristers in employed practice, which is currently working its way through the various committees at the Bar Council and will form an annexe to the Bar Council's code of conduct.

The details have yet to be published, but the emphasis is on conflicts of interest and the ethical dilemmas facing employed legal advisers. The EBC has also arranged for calls to the Bar Council for ethical guidance to be routed through to one of a panel of employed barristers who can provide advice based on experience.

"Once you are in employed practice, you become a bit isolated," Wright says. "There is a problem with meeting other barristers. One thing that is very nice about private practice is there is a lot of networking. You see each other in court, you have lunch with each other in the Inns of Court."

One way around this problem is for employed barristers to join their local circuit associations (only 10% of the employed Bar are members of a circuit association), but that is easier said than done in some parts of the country. Last year saw the well-publicised prohibition of employed barristers by the Northeastern Circuit and similar problems exist with the Northern and Wales and Chester circuits. It is one of the stated aims of the EBC to improve relations with the circuits.

Another organisation that appeared to be ignoring the merits of the employed Bar was the Lord Chancellor's Department, which is now called the Department for Constitutional Affairs. No member of the employed Bar has gained full silk during the last Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine's tenure and it remains to be seen if the new incumbent, Lord Falconer, will make much difference, assuming the rank of QC survives at all.

Whatever happens, in Wright's view the LCD did the employed Bar a disservice.

"The LCD took the view that outside private practice, you will not get silk unless you have made a significant contribution to the development of the law. It obviously did not see employed barristers as doing that.

"You could be a very eminent barrister, but you had to prove that you had made some advancement to the law. On the EBC, we have the legal advisers of BT, Transco and de la Rue, people who in other contexts would be regarded as leaders of their profession – why shouldn't people like them automatically qualify? It is another example of how we have to prove ourselves all the time."

This perception of employed barristers as somehow less worthy than those in private practice is why one of the main policy objectives to come from this year's conference is to persuade the Bar Council to replace the description of private practice barristers in the code of conduct from 'barristers in independent practice' to 'self-employed barristers'.

"We are barristers, not simply company employees or quasi-solicitors," Wright insists. "Barristers at the top of the tree of employed practice stand comparison with the very best in private practice. We do very good legal work of very high quality. That should be respected.

"Yet we feel at times that we have to justify our existence, to prove that the work that we do is really that of a barrister rather than a solicitor or some other lower form of life," she adds. "I do not see why we should have to do that."