Steven Vaughan

‘Prefer not to say’: diversity and diversity reporting at the bar of England & Wales

ABSTRACT The Bar of England & Wales, like the wider legal profession, does not reflect the society it serves. The current data published by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) suggests a profile in relation to gender and ethnicity that gives serious cause for concern. As regards additional diversity characteristics, the BSB (and others) have accepted that the existing datasets are not wholly reliable because of poor response rates to associated diversity questionnaires. In 2011, the Legal Services Board (LSB) introduced mandatory guidance that obliged its daughter regulators to put into place rules that relate to diversity monitoring and reporting across the legal profession. This paper is concerned with how the BSB has operationalised that statutory guidance in respect of the Bar. Drawing on data gathered from the websites of 160 chambers, I show significant non-compliance with the reporting rule, and question both how the BSB itself reports on diversity data and the drafting of the reporting rule. I ask whether non-compliance is partly a function of the complexity seen in how the BSB has made operational the LSB’s reporting requirements. My data also suggests that the BSB should target its enforcement and educational approaches to the reporting rule to small and medium sized chambers.

‘Gorilla exceptions’ and the ethically apathetic corporate lawyer

ABSTRACT This paper draws on interviews with 57 corporate finance lawyers working from global law firms based in the City of London. Drawing on this data, we highlight common themes of taking deals at ‘face value’, being the lawyer-technician who uses the law to effect his client’s wishes, and not ‘pushing’ ethics. We suggest that there is an apathy – a lack of concern or interest – about ethics on the part of corporate lawyers. This apathy stems from various sources. It is linked to assumptions about the sorts of clients that large law firms are willing or not willing to act for, and assumptions about the ‘right sort of people’ the firm hires and retains; it is linked to strong notions of role morality; and it is founded on the classic legal ethics ‘standard conception’ principles of neutrality and non-accountability. Our data also highlights a lack of ethical infrastructures in large firms, and a lack of ethical leadership from law firm partners for the associates and trainees working for them.

“Fitting in” and “opting out”: exploring how law students self-select law firm employers

ABSTRACT In this paper we draw on interviews with 15 law students at the University of Birmingham in the UK to explore the extent to which law students critically self-evaluate themselves against their perceptions of the preferences of elite law firms. While our conclusions are necessarily tentative, we show how some law students “opt out” of applying to certain law firms where they perceive there is no fit between themselves and that law firm. Equally, our data also shows that some students recognise that, despite not having a supplementary fit with a firm (i.e. they can see that they do not “match” that firm’s current crop of lawyers or what they think is the firm’s culture), they realise that they can instead be a complementary fit for the firm, and hence realise that their potential to add something “new” to the law firm (by way of increasing diversity) can secure them a vacation scheme placement or a training contract. Finally, a proportion of students play “the numbers game” and despite determining a law firm “misfit”, still proceed to apply to as many law firms as possible as they thought that more applications meant a higher chance of success.

Sexuality at the Bar: An Empirical Exploration into the Experiences of LGBT+ Barristers in England & Wales

The Bar of England & Wales is an historic, traditional institution of courtroom advocates and specialist advisers that can trace its origins back to the 13th century. As a field of study, there is comparatively little academic work on barristers. Where work has been done on the Bar, and in relation to diversity at the Bar, this has tended to focus either wholly or primarily on women barristers and suggests patterns of inequality, exclusion and forms of direct and indirect discrimination. Like the other branches of the legal profession in England and Wales, the Bar does not reflect the society it serves. In their world-first research, ‘Sexuality at the Bar’, Mason and Vaughan show a variety of complex practices which govern where (and when and how) LGBT+ members of the Bar feel comfortable being open about their sexuality as well as highlighting a significant number of LGBT+ barristers who have experienced work related bullying and/or discrimination. Their work also suggests an increasing role for Bar-specific LGBT+ networks and the value of LGBT+ role models, both at the Bar and in the judiciary.

The state of the nation: diversity and the British legal academy

In this short piece, I set out briefly what we know about the challenge of diversity in the legal academy from existing scholarship. That field, in the UK at least, is sparse. I then go on to present a snapshot of the legal academy using data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). I do this as the start of a much larger project on diversity and the legal academy that I plan to undertake over the next year. My argument is rather simple. The diversity of the legal academy reflects neither the diversity of our law student bodies nor the diversity of the wider population. Such diversity is vital for a number of reasons. My hope is that this piece can be the start of a dialogue on an important and largely ignored topic, and that further research will be done in this area.

Symbolism over substance? Large law firms and corporate social responsibility

ABSTRACT At its core, corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns the impacts of businesses on their surroundings. Despite their significant economic and geographic presence (and, as a corollary, their potential significant impacts), and despite the varied disciplinary and conceptual lenses used to study CSR, there is very little existing work looking at law firms and their own CSR policies. This paper fills part of that gap. In August 2014, we reviewed the websites of the top 100 English law firms, as ranked by the trade publication The Lawyer. We were interested in public disclosures made by those law firms on CSR. These were widespread. The majority of the top 100 firms say something to the wider world about CSR. However, what is said varies significantly. This is, perhaps, unsurprising. What is more surprising is that so few firms explain why they are committed to CSR. Where firms do make disclosures on CSR, these tend to group around the following three areas: (i) pro bono and community giving; (ii) diversity and inclusion; and (iii) environmental matters. For a number of firms, little or no distinction is made between pro bono (i.e. the giving of free legal advice) and wider ‘community giving’. We question whether this is the right approach. We were also concerned that, despite there being regulatory intervention by the Legal Services Board as regards the collection and reporting of diversity data by law firms (and other lawyers), the quality of disclosures (in terms of the amount, nature and breadth of data reported on) varied to such an extent that we were unable to draw any meaningful comparisons or conclusions on diversity in English law firms.