At the Bar, like many professions, I believe one needs mentors – an experienced person who takes an interest in your career, guides you and helps find focus in your career. As a black female barrister, I also recognise the need to be more visible as I know that it has a positive effect on black students who may be considering a career at the Bar.Īnother problem is retention. However, there are a number of good initiatives to address this problem for example, the mentoring scheme run by commercial sets including 3VB and initiatives led by black barristers such as Bridging the Bar.
The lack of black barristers creates the problem of not attracting black aspiring barristers. I certainly felt this way when I was considering a career at the Bar. There is also the ‘chicken and egg’ problem that if aspiring black barristers do not see many people who look like them at the commercial Bar, they might assume that the commercial Bar is not for them.
Commercial sets recruit from top universities and there is a lack of Black students at these. There is a problem that we do not have enough black candidates applying for pupillage. Pursuing a career at the Bar felt like a risk but ultimately, I thought I would enjoy being a barrister and would be good at it.ĭiversity at the Bar is a complex problem. I was lucky that I had a great alternative. The good thing is that when I was thinking about my options, the firm were good enough to let me defer right up until the point I decided to go for the barrister route. It made no sense to her – this is one of the things that are a barrier to entry – if you don’t have financial security (for example parents who are able to support you) the Bar appears to be a riskier option because of the probabilities of securing a pupillage and then tenancy. It was an incredibly tough decision and my mum continued to think that I was crazy to decline my training contract until the point I was offered a tenancy. I was still worried about fitting in at the Bar and the risk of pursuing the barrister route seemed greater.
By the time I reached that conclusion, I had missed the pupillage application deadline so I applied to a be a research assistant at the Law Commission and in that year I applied for and got a pupillage. I did a number of mini-pupillages at different chambers (commercial, chancery, mixed civil) that year and became convinced that I enjoyed the work and had the skills (in particular communication and analytical skills) to succeed as a barrister. At the end of my final year, I deferred the training contract and stayed for a masters degree, which I got a scholarship for and that gave me an extra year to think about what to do. It was a good offer but in my third year, my director of studies said to me she thought I would be a good barrister but I still did not think it was for me. In my second year, I secured a training contract in a magic circle firm.
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