Gender representation at the Bar Chambers High Net Worth

According to the Bar Standards Board's Diversity at the Bar 2020 report, women now constitute 38.2% of practising barristers, up 0.2% on the previous year. The proportion of female QCs increased from 16.2% in 2019 to 16.8% in 2020, illustrating the difference in gender diversity at different levels of seniority within the legal profession. 

Chambers High Net Worth ranks the top professional advisers to High Net Worth Individuals and organisations globally. Chambers High Net Worth 2021 includes Bar rankings for the following practice areas: 

The percentage of women ranked in all the Bar sections has increased from 19.7% in the 2018 edition to 27.2% in 2021, still considerably below the percentage of women practising at the Bar.  

While this increase is clearly to be welcomed, women are still significantly under-represented in these rankings when compared with the BSB figures for the profession as a whole. 

The total percentage of women barristers ranked in Chambers High Net Worth Bar sections are listed below. As the data shows, we are seeing a year-on-year increase since the 2018 edition of the legal rankings. In our efforts to support the furthering of diversity within the legal market, we are encouraging diversity stats to be included within our submissions process for the Chambers High Net Worth guide.

Forecasting shows that, at current rates, it will take until 2026 for  women barristers to be represented in Chambers High Net Worth at the same rate as they are in the wider market. It also predicts that it would take until the next decade for the rankings to split evenly between men and women, at current rates. We are committed to increasing representation of women and are keen to make the rate of change faster which is why we have implemented new sections in our submissions process to help drive the need and awarness of diversity and inclusion within the legal market. We encourage submitting firms to demonstrate their commitment to furthering diversity within their practice, which ultimately will be to the benefit of the wider market.  

One way the team is attempting to improve gender diversity is through encouraging sets to highlight women barristers in their submissions. We are also committed to representation of women in our research interviews.  

Last year, the team set a soft target of interviewing a gender- balanced split of lawyers in markets where it was possible to do so without unreasonably limiting the overall scope of the research. For 2022 research, we have developed a system of tracking how many male and female lawyers our researchers invite for interview and how many they end up interviewing.  

This will allow us to track whether we are interviewing a balanced split of male and female barristers, and, if not, whether the issue is with who our researchers request for interview or with sets substituting the female barristers we request for male colleagues. We hope to be able to provide a breakdown of this data next year. 

Chambers High Net Worth covers, in unmatched depth and with unparalleled accuracy, the leading lawyers, accountants, bankers, fiduciaries and wealth managers working for the global ultra-wealthy. Our dedicated High Net Worth research team conducted more than 10,000 interviews with leading players in worldwide private wealth for the 2021 guide alone, and these interviewee's insights form the backbone of our market-leading rankings and commentary.