UK: Lady Hale: Women barristers feel male colleagues getting bigger cases

UK: Lady Hale: Women barristers feel male colleagues getting bigger cases

Lady Hale

Senior women barristers feel they are being given fewer major cases than their equally competent male colleagues, Lady Hale, president of the UK Supreme Court, has said.

In an interview with The Times, the UK’s most senior judge said she had “heard from very competent women barristers that they don’t feel they are getting the big cases that their skills and experiences deserve when compared with the men”.

Lady Hale also said that women lawyers had told her they were receiving “lower than comparable fees for men of comparable stature and seniority”, something she had hoped was “a thing of the past”.

The judge warned that such slights were “more insidious than top-down discrimination” because it came through barristers’ clerks and solicitors.

She called for “a bit more transparency” in chambers with regards to the allocation of briefs to barristers.

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