Shadae Cazeau is the Head of Equality and Access to Justice at the Bar Standards Board and an unregistered barrister. Shadae’s former work includes a focus on discrimination in policing and racial inequality in the criminal justice system.
Oliver Jackling is the Research and Evaluation Manager at the BSB. His role includes undertaking research and evaluation projects and providing evidence to inform regulatory policy making.
Earlier this year we published our Income at the Bar by Gender and Ethnicity report (February 2022), which compared barristers’ incomes by gender and ethnicity and investigated changes between 2019 and 2020. The research found that female barristers and barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds are likely to earn less than White and male barristers. This holds true whether the comparison is limited to employed barristers, self-employed barristers, QCs, or barristers based inside or outside London. This also remained the case when barristers were grouped by their main area of practice and seniority by year of Call.
Female barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds were the lowest earning group,
whereas White male barristers were the highest earning group. There were also differences in the income of barristers from different minority ethnic backgrounds, with Black and Black British barristers earning less than Asian and Asian British barristers overall.
Comparing incomes in 2020 with 2019, it seems clear that the pandemic had an impact on incomes at the Bar, with most groups facing falls in income. The largest falls in income were for male barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds, and barristers based outside London. Female barristers experienced smaller falls in income overall than male barristers, and barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds experienced larger falls than White barristers. Falls in income were also larger for certain areas of practice than others – criminal law saw the largest fall in incomes, while family and personal injury law saw smaller decreases. In commercial and financial law, incomes increased from 2019 to 2020.
So, what does this tell us about what we need to do?
Inequality is experienced differently by different groups and income can be affected by many different factors that weren’t explored in this research: working patterns, work allocation, caring responsibilities etc. And income is only one factor affecting retention and progression of women and minority ethnic background barristers. Other factors like recruitment practices, career development opportunities and culture in chambers will also be relevant. We need to understand better what affects the income differences that we are observing. We have gathered feedback from stakeholders on the barriers experienced by different groups and we are analysing this as part of the review of our Equality Rules to try to address issues around work allocation, culture, recruitment and flexible working within the profession in particular.
More specifically, we will explore whether increased monitoring and data transparency might help close the income gap experienced by females and ethnic minorities across the profession.
How does this work align with the Legal Services Board 10 year strategy?
This work both strengthens our evidence base on diversity and inclusion, and informs our work to address issues of retention and progression, both key areas covered by challenge three of the LSB strategy. By focusing our work in this area, we hope to address issues around progression and retention for female barristers and barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds highlighted in research such as Diversity at the Bar (2022) and Trends in retention and demographics at the Bar (2021). By targeting these specific areas in our review of the Equality Rules, we are hopeful the impacts will be marked with improved retention and progression for female and black barristers.
Moreover, our evaluation of the regulatory returns (our regular survey and information request of barristers’ chambers) will help us to understand the impact of the profession’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and provide clear examples of what we consider to be good practice.
Conclusion
We are keen to continue to engage and collaborate with the profession and other regulators to help us deliver on our soon to be published equality strategy for 2022-25 and will ensure that it takes into account the longer-term strategy of the LSB.
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