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Why are judges, barristers, and solicitors so unrepresentative of the population?
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Your average judge, barrister, or solicitor seems to be from a privately educated or 'very good school' background, speaks very posh, and tends to look down on those not in the law or the professions.
Why is this? Why is you never get working class cor blimey guvnah Cockney barristers?
In the interests of fairness and justice, shouldn't the legal profession have people from all backgrounds? And if they do happen to come from a humble background, they end up speaking and acting as if they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Why?
Why is this? Why is you never get working class cor blimey guvnah Cockney barristers?
In the interests of fairness and justice, shouldn't the legal profession have people from all backgrounds? And if they do happen to come from a humble background, they end up speaking and acting as if they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Why?
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Or average people cant get pupillage?
After all, imagine earning over £230 an hour as your standard rate...your life would be very different.
My very middle classs uncle used to be a barrister - he then became chief clerk for the justices of the peace.
Until the age of 30 he had a typical middle class accent, then suddenly he cultivated the most northern accent you have ever heard.
Inverse snobbery or something.
Solicitors? Really? How many have you met, and how posh were they? I wouldn't have said they were any posher than any other profession, and I very much doubt the majority went to private schools.
Daddy will be a judge or barrister and son goes on to do the same and get a job at the chambers.
Having been to the barristers chambers Christmas party i can assure you, when the wigs come off and the lighst go down, these guys are game!!
I work in a court.
Yes, I don't believe a posh accent assures better service in anything.
Which is a shame and proves my point.
Does it? How?
She grew up on Council Estate, is half Greek (IE not white), went to state school and did her A'Level's at community college.
It took a lot of hard work, a lot of education (Degree, Masters, BVC) then she had to secure a Pupilage.
I do agree that she isn't the 'norm' BUT she is not totally in the minority at her Chambers.
Also she never gets to wear her £500 wig as she mainly does family law which is rarely at Crown Court
Having worked in both barristers chambers and solicitors firms for many years now, I disagree with your first point,some barristers I have worked with have come from fairly modest backgrounds, with no other member of the Bar in their family, i don't know many posh solicitors, some but not many!
I totally agree with your second point having attended many chambers parties
Solicitors can be anyone off the top of the bus, really - in my residency/access battles my lovely solicitor was a Geordie. Anyone with any degree can go on to qualify as a solicitor. And a lot of them spend their lvies doing fairly low level stuff like conveyancing, etc.
The barrister my solicitor engaged to wipe the floor with my ex, was an eccentric genius. He'd glance at notes and have an immediate grasp of the case, and he needed to say and do very little to swing the whole thing my way. He spoke RP and had the old Etonian type name to match.
The solicitors etc I met during the case where I was a witness, were again - very nice and charming people but clearly just functionaries.
ETA: Forgot but I also helped a friend through a libel case when he was a litigant in person at the High Courts in London. So was back and forth to various hearings over a period of a couple of years. The judges there are as heavy duty as they come - but always struck me as astute, and switched on. If a little old fashioned.
The family court judge I got for the final hearing of our case reminded me of my dad - in looks and mannerisms, which took the fear out of it a lot. He also made judgements like my dad would have.:D
I think the problem comes with little local provincial legal eagles - like that Doncaster judge in the recent Twitter joke trial - it was hard to believe she even knew what the internet was, let alone Twitter.
I agree. Money and connections always talked louder than 'class'.
Well yeah, if their arguments were good and they knew the law. Wouldn't you???
But brains taslk loudest of all - lawyers come from all backgrounds.
Speaking as the parent of an aspiring barrister, I don't think it is. I am not wealthy at all, and here is what it will cost if she gets there:
First degree (not law unfortunately, as she didn't know what she wanted to do then): £15,000 in student loans.
Law conversion course: £12,000 fees for one year course, funded by bank loan with deferred repayments.
Masters: Scholarship (phew).
Barristers training: £15,000 fees, over two years.
Legal work experience (essential: lots of experience working at Boots counts for nothing at all): almost all unpaid; tube fares sometimes refunded.
Total fees that have to be repaid: £42,000. Earnings to date: (age 24) - very low; works very long hours and is barely paid.
There is a reason why barristers do not come from poor homes. There are sponsorships in the field of commercial law, but she is passionately determined to work in the field of human rights, where understandably there are no sponsorships at all.
Nah, brains are over rated. A good education with the right tie can make even the mediocre excel!
The very old argument was that the upper classes were less prejudiced in legal cases because they couldn't be bought, or were less likely to be bought. Back then the rich had few, if any, commercial interests.
Well, it's all changed now.
The upper classes no longer have much money and Thatcher's barrow boys are the billionaires. The upper classes got stepped on by the, supposedly, "lower classes" on the way up. There are probably still a few genteel upper class dodderers living out the dream but the rich list is now almost exclusively self-made. They even encourage the idea that "class" matters to distract from the truth.
I can't emphasise this enough, most millionaires are self-made and most came from a working class background.
As far as barristers are concerned, it's the same. Most barristers are not from upper class backgrounds, however there is obviously an establishment that is old school. But take heart, even that old school barrister you have is either putting an accent on, or the last great hope of a failing upper class family. Hey, if you want a real barrister, maybe you should get a hungry upper class one.
(I'm from Northern Ireland originally and NOBODY wanted a snooty lawyer. No matter what your political/religious allegiance, you wanted a Catholic lawyer from the Short Strand or the Falls - pitbulls that never gave up so long as the state was paying.)