Please join ELA’s Employment Law Counsel Instructions Monitoring Scheme to help ELA to promote equitable briefing of counsel
Last year, ELA’s Management Committee ran a pilot scheme amongst ManCo firms to monitor their employment teams’ instructions of counsel by reference to gender. The data set was small, but tended to suggest that the gender of the instructing solicitor may have played a part in the decision-making process when briefing counsel: in other words, it appeared that a female barrister was more likely to be instructed in a case where the instructing solicitor was female. This conclusion is very tentative.
ELA is now extending the monitoring scheme to all firms represented in our membership. Liverpool Law Society would like to encourage you and your firm to join ELA’s monitoring scheme and monitor your firm’s instructions of employment law counsel for at least 3 months by reference to gender (of both the instructing solicitor and the barrister). The data will be collected anonymously by their easy-to-use form.
To join the ELA Counsel Instructions Monitoring Scheme, please email Lindsey at lindseyw@elaweb.org.uk who will be happy to help!