Despite women now outnumbering male judges on the High Court, the Law Council’s equitable briefing targets are yet to be met.
However, that’s something that barrister and chair of the Law Council of Australia’s equal opportunity committee, Kate Eastman AM SC, is hopeful will change moving forward.
Delivering a keynote at a recent Westpac equitable briefing event, Ms Eastman said that the recent appointment of Justice Jagot to the High Court was a very “significant milestone for the legal profession” and representative of a modern legal profession.
“This should not be surprising because, for at least 25 years, women have outnumbered men in law school. And women now constitute almost two-thirds of law graduates. So, the numbers on the High Court reflect what we’re seeing in terms of law graduates,” she said.
“Women also make up 60 per cent or higher of newly admitted solicitors. And if we look at solicitors from early entry right here, up to 14 years, then women are at least two-thirds of all women solicitors and overall, more than half 53.5 per cent.”
However, in 2021, across Australia, there were 6,371 barristers, of which 1,700 were women, constituting 26 per cent of the bar. In NSW, there were 600 women barristers practising in NSW — a number that doesn’t even make up 25 per cent of the whole of the bar, according to Ms Eastman. Additionally, 4 per cent of the bar were women barristers over the age of 60. Almost a third of the bar were men over 60. Almost half of the bar were men over 50.
“Women were very rarely in a speaking role in the High Court, particularly as junior counsel, and if they were, it was usually because they were there on a pro bono brief. But then, when I went and looked at NSW, I was really surprised that 33 per cent of matters in the Court of Criminal Appeals had women appearing.”
However, comparing it to the Court of Appeal, the numbers were as low as 2 per cent — which Ms Eastman said meant that there was a “good case to say” that female barristers were still not being briefed equitably.
Source: Kate Eastman on the ‘great opportunity’ for equitable briefing – Lawyers Weekly