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The Times
November 20 2000

 

Law 'still biased towards rich, white and male'

By Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

DISCRIMINATION in the legal profession is alive and well, with obstacles still blocking the path of ethnic minority, female and poorer students, according to a book to be published next week.

In a foreword to the book, Discriminating Lawyers, the senior law lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, says that its findings are "worrying" for those who value the goal of equal access and opportunity to the legal profession.

Lord Bingham, who until earlier this year was Lord Chief Justice, argues in the book that the stereotype of a profession with a "white, middle-class, middle-aged, Oxbridge-educated elite" is misleading. But, he adds, there is some foundation for the stereotype: it is not easy for any would-be solicitor or barrister to obtain training places and jobs. But it is harder for women from ethnic minorities, for those with "a modest family background" or "a degree from an unfashionable university". He adds: "The contributors to this book do not raise this conclusion as conjecture; they demonstrate it as fact."

The research finds that the rising cost of qualifying as a lawyer is a deterrent: students are increasingly burdened with debts - £25,000 for new lawyers is not uncommon.

Sir Stephen Sedley, the Court of Appeal judge, says up to a third of students rely on parental means in sums running to thousands of pounds, which makes them socially and economically advantaged. "We should not be surprised, if this pattern persists, if in the years to come the Bar returns towards the narrow stereotype from which in the last two decades it has been escaping."

Top-paying City law firms and chambers tend to favour Oxbridge students over less popular universities, especially former polytechnics, which have a higher percentage of ethnic-minority students.

Professor Phil Thomas, of Cardiff University, the author of the book, says that at the Bar, 66 per cent of male graduates from Oxbridge secured pupillage (training places) compared with 10 per cent from the "new" universities.

Government policy on tuition fees is frustrating the aim of widening access to the profession. The research also shows women are still failing to be represented at the top levels of the profession in proportion to their numbers and they earn on average less than their male counterparts.

The research coincides with reports that a black woman solicitor, Jenny Lindsay, 37, who was racially discriminated against by her law firm, failed to persuade the Solicitors Complaints Bureau to act against the firm, Ironsides Ray and Vials, which no longer exists in the same form. She had won a discrimination claim in 1994 and was awarded £10,000.

At an estimated cost of £20,000, Ms Lindsay, now with a firm in Wilmslow, then took her former firm to the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal. It reprimanded 19 of the 21 partners then at the firm over the handling of her case and ordered them to pay costs.

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