The study, conducted by University of Birmingham senior law lecturer Dr Steven Vaughn, found that a large number of barristers’ chambers are sidestepping their obligation to provide diversity data to the Bar Standard Board, while the regulator has been unfocussed in its enforcement of the Legal Services Board’s diversity rules. Specifically, Dr Vaughn’s study suggests that widespread non-compliance with diversity reporting procedures stems from ‘apparent misinterpretation of regulatory requirements’ on disclosure, among other factors. While law firms are obliged to report diversity data to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, no equivalent system of mandatory reporting has yet been implemented by the BSB

Patterns of disclosure

Dr Vaughn’s study was administered at random to 160 different chambers, of which just 91 disclosed some form of diversity data. Most notable among the study’s findings were that chambers’ appeared more likely to disclose data relating to gender than to other factors, such as socio-economic background or race, and that large chambers were generally more compliant with regards to disclosure than their small and medium counterparts. Moreover, chambers generally appeared less proficient in disclosing diversity data for barristers themselves than for other staff, such as clerks and administrative assistants.

‘This is striking, and suggests that barristers may feel (for whatever reason) differently about diversity disclosures than the staff who work in their chambers,’ the report reads. ‘One might hypothesise that in the hyper-privileged and hyper-traditional world of the Bar… barristers believe that anything which marks them out as different and/or as an outsider could be harmful.’

SourcesL Legal Futures; Legal Cheek