Originally published here.

In 2016, Mason and Vaughan launched an online survey to capture the career experiences of LGBT+ members of the Bar. This was completed by 126 practising barristers, Queens Counsel, pupils (barrister trainees), and students taking the pre-vocational Bar Professional Training Course. The survey focused on four main areas: (i) homophobia in the workplace (ii) if (and how and where) barristers were ‘out’ at work; (iii) the potential connections between sexuality and practice; and (iv) the purpose of LGBT+networks and role models. Following the survey, Mason and Vaughan used the data they had captured to build a range of questions for semi-structured interviews. 38 of these took place in the latter half of 2016: 2 with pupil barristers; 4 with students; 5 with QCs; and 27 with barristers.

Unlike law firms, which are owned (usually, but not exclusively) by the solicitor partners, with employee solicitors and others working for those partners, the majority of barristers (13,000 out of 16,000 in total) are self-employed. They commonly work in chambers, groupings of self-employed barristers which share resources including premises, clerking staff and IT support. Barristers do not share profits with each other. Their work is almost exclusively derived from solicitors who instruct the barristers on behalf of the clients. Here, barristers’ clerks act as intermediaries in the allocation of work from solicitors to barristers, and otherwise act as support for the members of chambers. Progression at the Bar appears in various forms. Certain barristers "take silk" and are known as QCs (Queen’s Counsel). The other significant route of progression for barristers is to join the judiciary. 

The survey participants comprised 28 women and 98 men, aged between 21 and 71, and called to the Bar between 1968 and 2015. 108 identified as White; 2 as Black or Black British; 6 as Asian or Asian British; 2 as Chinese or Chinese British; and 8 as Mixed Race. No survey participant identified as trans.

13 of those who took part in the survey also sat part time as judges. The vast majority (100 of the 126) practised in London. Half were in the first generation of their family to attend university. One third attended Oxbridge as an undergraduate. 10% had some form of disability. The survey participants worked in more than twenty different practice areas, with significant groupings in Civil, Commercial/Chancery, Criminal, Family Law and Public Law.

Just over half of our survey respondents had experienced some form of discrimination at work or in their professional studies on account of their sexuality. One third had experienced some form of bullying or harassment in these arenas. 26.5% of survey respondents had experienced sexuality linked discrimination ‘sometimes’, ‘often’ or ‘frequently’. 25.6% had experienced such discrimination ‘rarely’ (47.9% said ‘never’). These data arguably suggest that homophobia is stronger at the Bar than in the general population: Stonewall research shows that, in the general population, one in five (19 per cent) lesbian, gay and bi employees have experienced verbal bullying from colleagues, customers or service users because of their sexual orientation in the last five years.

There is a rich literature on how multiple forms of difference (e.g. being a working class, lesbian barrister) can mean that different individuals experience difference differently. Our survey respondents split fairly evenly on whether they thought that different members of the LGBT+ Bar are treated similarly. In the survey free text comments, it was suggested that “gay men have it better” at the Bar. This rang true in many of the interviews, where people spoke of clear instances of transphobia and of biphobia.

You can read the complete survey here.

Or you can listen to it on Spotify.