This article attempts to deal comprehensively with counsel’s authority to compromise a pending action. Particular points sought to be established are that an English barrister, unlike an English solicitor, has nearly absolute implied authority to compromise; that the treatment in a recent English Court of Appeal case of counsel’s apparent authority to compromise is correct and capable of resolving scattered inconsistencies in the case law; and that in a fused profession such as exists in Singapore and West Malaysia, the English case law is generally applicable and further that the barrister cases are tentatively to be preferred where the question is one of implied authority to compromise.