The barrister Jon Holbrook has written an excellent piece for the Critic questioning the rationale behind the Bar Standards Board proposed rule change which would impose a duty on barristers to “advance equality, diversity and inclusion”. The BSB says it wants to bring about “demographic change in the profession”, but in fact it’s already extremely diverse, as Jon points out.
In 2021 a BSB ‘think-piece’ written by its board member Leslie Thomas KC foreshadowed this proposal. He argued that a lack of action on the Bar’s demography will add “truth and weight to the view, held by many, that the profession is “White, stale and male, antiquated, exclusionary, isolating, and a place where prejudices not only exist but, in my view thrive”.
These are strong words and suggest that the Bar, a profession of about 18,000 practising and mostly self-employed barristers, is dominated by elderly white men who spend their days lamenting the demise of Victorian values. Fortunately, the BSB’s own facts don’t support Thomas’s characterisation.
For a start, there was 16.9% of black and minority ethnic (BME) barristers at the Bar was in December 2023. Comparisons with the “norm” are tricky but in much of its data the BSB treats the working age population of England and Wales as an appropriate norm. On this basis BME barristers are slightly over-represented at the bar, since BME individuals comprise only 16.7% of the norm. Also, when it comes to the direction of travel the BSB notes that the per centage of BME barristers has increased by 0.5% each year since its first Diversity at the Bar Report in 2015. As for BME pupils (trainee barristers) — who indicate what the future Bar may look like — they comprise a disproportionately high 24.9%.
Women also fare well in the profession despite Thomas’s view that it’s a place where prejudices thrive. In December 2023 they comprised 41 per cent of the Bar, so less than the norm of 50%. But why, and does it matter? BSB data for 2023 shows that women are over-represented as pupils (60%) but that their per centage falls with seniority. This is hardly surprising since women who remain in practice are nearly twice as likely as men (41 vs 23%) to have primary caring responsibility for children. So, this disparity, far from being a product of prejudice, is a consequence of decisions made by free-thinking men and women about how to arrange their family and professional lives.
Norms regarding sexuality may be unreliable since when asked this question nearly 42% of barristers declined to say, no doubt because, as with much of the BSB’s monitoring, they consider it none of the BSB’s business. Nevertheless, on the basis of those the BSB does know about, it concludes that the LGBTQ community is 12.6% of pupils, 7.2% of junior barristers and 5.3% of senior barristers (Kings counsel, KC). This the BSB says “compares to an estimate of 4.0% of the UK population aged 16 and over”. So the Bar seems to have a disproportionately high number of those who are LGBTQ. One can only marvel at their persistence in the face of a profession that Thomas described as “antiquated, exclusionary and isolating”.
The BSB’s rationale for seeking demographic change in the profession is that it “must ensure” — words that highlight its campaigning zeal — “that the profession is truly representative of those it serves”. But how “truly representative”? The Bar serves a disproportionately high number of criminals, divorcees and illegal migrants. Yet the BSB is presumably not going to gird its loins to increase representation of these groups at the expense of the law-abiding and happily married who didn’t arrive on small boats.
Worth reading in full.
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