70 years of the Young Barristers’ Committee

Every YBC Chair comes to occupy a senior position at the Bar when they are relatively early on in their career. Juggling your personal and professional lives alongside a representative role is a unique challenge. Despite this, the Young Barristers’ Committee is thriving, now marking seven decades of advocating on behalf of the junior profession.

I begin by asking all the leaders why they first joined the YBC and it soon becomes clear that the committee found them as much as the other way around.

Tom Little KC notes that he ‘wasn’t particularly aware’ of the YBC when he was elected to the Bar Council. ‘I was more interested in what I might call the politics of the profession more broadly than the committee aspect of it, but then it became clear to me how important the committee was.’ It is an illustrious role – among its former chairs are no fewer than 16 silks, many judges, and two Chairs of the Bar.

Lord Etherton first joined the committee as a member and later became Chair. As far as he could recall, there was no democratic vote – which is now no longer the case; the Chair and Vice are both elected by majority.

Catherine Addy KC says expectations from the senior Bar gave her the impetus to stand for election: ‘I was told by more senior members of my chambers that it was my duty to do it and that we all had to give something back. [I] was very happy to do it, but it was more a sort of call to arms.’

‘I met the Young Barristers’ Committee when I was in Washington [D.C.] with the International Bar Association,’ says Katherine Duncan. ‘The Bar Council had a reception there and so that was when I got to know [its work]. I really enjoyed getting to know Young Bar issues across different specialities.’

‘I joined off the back of sitting on a panel during the Pupillage Fair,’ incumbent Chair Amrit Kaur Dhanoa says. ‘This was in late 2019… I remember speaking to the Young Bar Policy Manager at the time and enjoyed sharing my experiences with those considering a career at the Bar. She asked if I had heard of the Young Barristers’ Committee and whether I would like to join. It quickly became apparent to me just how important having a forum of this kind was, as not long after I had joined in March 2020, COVID-19 hit.’

How have priorities changed over the years?

We then turn to what everyone’s priorities were when they became Young Bar Chair. It made sense to start with the person who led the committee through perhaps the most pressing issue the country, let alone the Bar, has faced in years: the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘I signed up thinking I was going to have a really jolly time,’ Katherine says, making everyone chuckle. ‘[COVID-19] happened and we weren’t really prepared for it at all. It went from having weekly meetings about all these other issues to: was it safe for barristers to go to court?’

The lack of clear information at the beginning of the pandemic proved a serious problem. ‘We were getting messages daily before we woke up from junior barristers saying: “I’m being sent by my clerks to ‘X’ magistrates’ court, but I’m really worried about my health” or “I’m really worried about my partner or my children’s health because they’ve got additional needs or immunity problems”,’ she explains.

Despite the unprecedented situation, the Bar acted quickly. ‘There was a real drive to make communication clear because there were so many mixed messages coming out,’ Katherine says. ‘We then had to think about people who didn’t have work and then we were trying to build up ties across the Young Bar generally to ensure we could speak on behalf of the Young Bar as a whole.’

Catherine Addy KC was Chair in the YBC’s 50th anniversary year when they set up the Young Bar Conference. It was intended to be a one off but proved so popular that it became an annual event (before later being merged with the main Bar Conference). ‘That was a really big thing for us because suddenly we were running quite a substantial enterprise and then that ran successfully for a number of years,’ she explains.

Tom, who took over two years after Catherine, said the real challenge was criminal fees. ‘[As Vice Chair] I took on quite a lot of the Young Bar leadership role in what was Lord Carter’s review on criminal fees, which stepped across the two years [I was Vice and then Chair],’ he said.

Tom and Catherine both sought after their time as Chair to introduce a stipend for the YBC Chair to ensure the best candidates were not put off from applying on financial grounds and enhance diversity, which Amrit assures them is still there.

Another priority for Tom was cementing the Young Bar Chair accompanying the Bar Chair on Circuit visits as protocol. ‘Everyone just thought, well, this is a blindingly obvious good idea why haven’t we done this before,’ he says.

It quickly becomes apparent that a significant amount of progress made at the Bar is thanks to the work of the YBC; each Chair seems to have made a difference.

Insights into procedural changes are fascinating. ‘Some of the older generation [will remember that] the YBC still had a silk on the committee to try and keep them in order,’ Tom notes.

Catherine recalls a time shortly before she became Chair when the key priority was securing paid pupillage. ‘Hard to believe, but I was at the Young Bar – Tom will remember too – at a time when people were still doing pupillages for free.’ Minimum funding rates for pupillage have been mandatory since 2003.

Catherine also gives an insight into the clerks’ room of yesteryear. ‘There was one fax machine, no chambers’ email and you still had some senior silks writing out opinions by hand and the typist would deal with them or some would even be sent out in manuscript. Occasionally, one of the jobs of the junior tenant was to check the Head of Chambers’ handwriting against a typewritten document. We are a world away from that, I think.’

Issues facing the Young Bar today

We then turn to current issues facing the Bar including bullying and harassment, wellbeing and the earnings gap – a particularly pressing issue for the YBC as a Bar Council report published in April found that gap starts right at the beginning of barristers’ careers (New practitioner earnings differentials at the self-employed Bar, Bar Council, April 2024).

Katherine recalls the earnings gap being talked about during her time as Chair. ‘We noticed that the disparity started very early on in your career, which again nobody could really understand because everyone’s just out of Bar school. And then it just gets embedded. So that’s something that I think the junior Bar and the Bar Council still has to grapple with,’ she says.

Tom recognises that some of the issues we discussed have been present as far back as 2006 and beyond. ‘They are the same problems from when I was the Chair, and they’re still the same problems because the changes that take place are mainly sticking-plaster solutions.’

Catherine says remote working is one of the major issues the Bar will need to address. ‘[Our chambers] handled it very well in terms of making sure we had online networks during COVID-19, but… it’s the new people that have joined since we all started working from home who I think find it harder.’

Amrit agrees, pointing out that the YBC has been tackling this issue as the committee recently published guidance for barristers and chambers working remotely.

‘We’ve listened to [chambers] and we’ve heard those at the junior Bar saying they don’t get enough time with seniors in chambers anymore or they go in and there aren’t enough practitioners around. In the early years of practice, learning by osmosis from others about their day-to-day experiences is fundamental to practice development. We must ensure that juniors continue to be able to learn in this way and they feel supported in developing their skills and practices,’ she explains.

Amrit also identifies retention and diversity as concomitant challenges the Bar must grapple with, since it is generally women who leave practice in greater numbers. There also exists a disparity between the overall percentage of barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds across the profession (16.9%) and the percentage of KCs from minority ethnic backgrounds (10.7%), as highlighted in the Diversity at the Bar 2023 report published in January 2024.

Is the Bar better now than it was?

During her time, Katherine says then Chair of the Bar Amanda Pinto KC ‘wanted [the Young Bar] in the room’ which seemingly hasn’t always been the case. ‘Amanda really thought we could bring something – and I think that’s a good change.’

Catherine concurs, wondering ‘whether we just shouted loud enough that they realised we weren’t going to go away and so they had to deal with us.’ But she is glad to hear that the collaborative approach which began during her time endures.

Explaining how he came to obtain pupillage (then un-regulated) through his university college law society, and the serendipity of sitting next to a Bencher at Gray’s Inn who took him on, Lord Etherton says: ‘I do think that that was wrong. I do think that the present system, under which anyone can apply in a transparent way, in competition with others, is a very good thing.’

‘There’s been a lot of doom-mongering for decades about the future of the Bar and it does a very good job at still managing to thrive and survive,’ Tom says. When he was considering the Bar, friends told him to become a solicitor instead, describing the Bar as ‘a cut flower: it’s pretty at the top, but dead at the bottom’.

And yet, they are all still here. The Bar is now bigger than ever at almost 18,000 practising barristers. Despite the number of pupillages on offer hitting record highs, the process remains intensely competitive with many applicants successful only on their second or third try.

What’s most fascinating in hearing views on the role of Chair of the YBC is what it should be about, how it should be used and how the Chair should embody the ambitions and feelings of the junior profession. Lord Etherton states his view most succinctly: ‘I regarded [the Young Bar Chair’s] role as simply being a thorn in the side of the judiciary and the Bar establishment.’

Though they have in more recent times become a support to the Chair of the Bar, working in tandem with them rather than against, it comes as no surprise that the Chair of the YBC stands on their own, as the voice of the junior profession, and of the future. As the committee comes within touching distance of its first centenary, it feels in ruder health than ever before.