DIVERSITY AT DOUGHTY STREET CHAMBERS

At Doughty Street Chambers, diversity is welcomed, celebrated, essential.

The purpose of this page is to ensure transparency in our diversity and inclusion policies.

We know we have more work to do and that securing a diverse workforce is a driver of excellence. We also know that diversity is not just a fad, nor is it a numbers game; our policies and culture all play a vital role in ensuring we build an inclusive environment where all of our people can grow and flourish.

To achieve this, DSC is taking a systematic approach, and bold action on diversity and inclusion. You can find some of the details of the actions we are taking on this page.

Spotlight on the UK Bar: Chambers & Partners Diversity & Inclusion Podcast

In May 2023 Chambers & Partners released their Diversity & Inclusion Spotlight Podcast with Doughty Street Chambers, following our win of the 'Diversity and Inclusion: Outstanding Set' award at the Chambers and Partners UK Bar Awards 2022. Luke Vincett spoke to our Aswini Weereratne KC and Maya Sikand KC who lead our Equality Diversity and Inclusion efforts here at chambers. Listen below:

Diversity at The Bar

Diversity, Inclusion, Equality and Wellbeing initiatives in Chambers

The Diversity Working Groups within Chambers work on initiatives that help to increase diversity among barristers and staff and are responsible for various streams of outreach work, content, and policy reviews. They each work hard to identify which groups are significantly underrepresented amongst DSC barristers and staff and to devise strategies to address this. In addition, Chambers has a group dedicated to monitoring the fair allocation of work amongst members and taking steps if any adverse trends are identified, and groups which work to increase inclusivity within DSC as a whole through a series of events and other initiatives. Chambers' Wellbeing Team works to build awareness of matters pertaining to, and the importance of wellbeing, organising various streams of internal activity, such as events, external signposting and policy reviews.

Positive Action Strategy

Doughty Street Chambers is fully committed to avoiding any unlawful positive discrimination but is also keen to maximise the opportunities the law currently permits in terms of taking positive action to address well-known and evidenced pre-existing inequalities. As such, a Positive Action Strategy for Chambers is being implemented to cover the breadth of operations from recruitment through to retention for staff, pupils, members, Associates and Academics. 

Diversity Data

The Bar’s Code of Conduct requires us to invite our workforce (barristers and staff) to provide diversity data about themselves. We are further required to publish an accurate and anonymised summary of that data, and we do so on this page of our website. See our diversity data report of June 2019 and June 2021. We are required to update this report at least every three years, although we aim to do so more frequently.

The survey is entirely voluntary and is conducted in such a way to guarantee the anonymity of those contributing.  A large percentage of our workforce responded to the invitation to supply diversity data.

Chambers is committed to no all-male panels (“manels”) at Chambers-organised public conferences or events. Our members will not serve as panellists at a Chambers-organised public conferences or events when there are no women on the panel. For events that we organise or plan, we aim for at least 50% female speakers. Our preference is for women to be included as panellists, not only as chairs or moderators.