The latest move comes after a 2015 report, ‘Snapshot: The Experience of Self-Employed Women at the Bar’, found that female barristers are still experiencing incidents of sexual harassment in their workplaces despite a broader cultural shift within the historically male-dominated profession. The Bar Council’s latest guidelines will be implemented alongside other recommendations from the report, which include creating support networks for self-employed barristers.
‘The sexual harassment policy that has just been released is an important part of [the response to the report], but it is only a small part of a very concerted effort to address this problem,’ said the report’s co-author Kate Brunner QC.
According to Sam Mercer, executive of the Bar Council’s equality, diversity and social mobility committee, chambers often struggle to adequately handle harassment allegations as they lack the HR function found in law firms.
‘It’s about giving advice to chambers on how they manage these issues properly, what their responsibilities are in respect to the regulator and that they’re managed confidentially and the right processes are followed,’ Ms Mercer said.
The Bar Council’s toolkit provides a definition of sexual harassment, an outline of the responsibilities of chambers’ heads, and a model sexual harassment policy. Source: Legal Business
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