‘Incredibly disappointing’: Pay gap for female barristers at four-year high
Female barristers were paid just 20 per cent of the $1.65 billion the Bar charged in fees last financial year despite getting 31 per cent of briefings, a new report reveals, prompting leading barristers to call for quotas, mandatory reporting and tougher targets.
This was the lowest the value of brief fees going to women had been for four years, according to the Law Council of Australia’s Equitable Briefing Annual Report, and is down from 26 per cent last year.
Elizabeth Ruddle, convener of the Women Barristers’ Association, says more concentrated efforts are needed to improve gender equity.
The proportion of female senior barristers – meaning those with more than 10 years’ experience at the Bar – getting work compared with men also went backwards on last year, dropping to 26 per cent.
Barristers told The Australian Financial Review that while equitable briefing policies were working to increase the total representation of women barristers in matters, more effort was urgently needed to address these stubborn and worsening differences in the type and value of that work.
Elizabeth Ruddle, KC, a senior crown prosecutor and convener of the Women Barristers’ Association, suggested that “quotas certainly should be considered” to fix the gap.
“Without active policymaking to support the briefing of women, just hoping that our sheer numbers will break through isn’t enough,” she said.
She called for solicitors and clients to make a concerted effort to brief female barristers for higher-value work and matters in higher courts, noting that women were underrepresented, especially in commercial and appellate jurisdictions.
“Unconscious bias plays a significant part in briefing decisions. Especially around those big cases, solicitors or clients may not think to look outside that usual handful of barristers, usually men, that they always use.
“Quotas would mean that firms need to turn their minds at the very least to briefing those senior women.”
Victorian barrister and Australian Women Lawyers president Astrid Haban-Beer added that the decline in numbers of senior women briefing rates was “nothing short of incredibly disappointing”.
She called for quotas, mandatory data collection and more ambitious targets for briefings and fees.
“As a profession, if we want the gender pay gap to improve, the targets must be higher and they must involve the value of briefs.”
Australian Women Lawyers president Astrid Haban-Beer says data is key to improving equity.
She pointed to a Victorian government policy requiring that any of the panel firms it used for legal work provided 50 per cent of work and 50 per cent of fees to women barristers as an example of “a more ambitious target”.
Ms Haban-Beer said that firms, clients and even barristers’ clerks should also be required to track and report their briefing numbers, as barristers themselves generally did not have much transparency around fees.
NSW Bar Association president Ruth Higgins, SC, warned that the Bar needed to be “fair, equitable, inclusive and diverse” to attract and retain the best talent, and that equitable briefing policy goals were core to this.
Below target
The Law Council’s target was set in 2016 and aimed to get 30 per cent of all briefs to go to women barristers and at least 30 per cent of the value of all brief fees by 2020. It is voluntary but signatories include Telstra, Woolworths, Westpac and most of Australia’s biggest law firms.
NSW Bar Association president Ruth Higgins welcomed the review.
Mr Murphy said the Law Council would review the policy next year to consider whether its scope should be broadened or its terms and thresholds strengthened to help address issues around pay and seniority. While it met the target for briefs in 2021-22, it has never hit the fee target.
“Feedback suggests potential reasons for the discrepancy between briefing rates and fees include the types of clients, calibres of briefs, and areas of work more commonly offered to women,” Mr Murphy said.
“These structural issues of gender inequality will require further examination and effort to address.”
Dr Higgins welcomed a commitment from the Law Council to the policy, saying the association was “concerned by the differences – and decrease over the last financial year” of the briefs to senior women barristers.
The silk said that further work was needed to drive up both this metric and the overall value of the work undertaken by female barristers.
The Law Council’s report was based on information from 189 “briefing entities” (solicitors, in-house counsel and others) who recorded 27,802 briefs worth $1,652,892,082 in 2022-23.
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