Editors' Blog

Burning Oxbridges

Posted 14/11/2008 by Alex Novarese

It never ceases to amaze me the passions that the Bar arouses when it comes to diversity and privilege. In hindsight, I probably should have made a few points clearer about our recent Future stars at the Bar feature at the time of its publication. Whatever the reason, the piece attracted a string of posts, many of them highly critical of us.

Generally, we were accused of being elitist, focusing too much on London-based advocates and ignoring the criminal Bar. But the key issue for many posters was that we were selecting barristers on the basis of their education, and mainly Oxbridgers at that.

Again, it was probably my fault for not making some points clearer in the piece but I’d like to respond to the points raised. There was only one selection procedure: the journalist Dominic Carman canvassed the largest litigation teams in the City and asked which up-and-coming commercial barristers they rated.

Does that make the list comprehensive? Of course not, but asking the actual clients seemed a reasonable method of highlighting some promising young advocates. Indeed, I can’t think of any other logical selection criteria.

Dominic only added in the details on education after he had whittled his list down to 10 – at the point of selection he did not know where any of the list had gone to university.

As to the claims that the list was London-centric and weighted towards the commercial Bar, that is absolutely right - Legal Week is primarily focused on commercial law and that focus was reflected in the list. Obviously, there are many excellent young advocates active in the regions and criminal Bar - it’s just that they were largely outside the scope of the piece.

I’d also add that Dominic has been a valued contributor to Legal Week for years and has an excellent contact base and knowledge of the Bar. He also asked me to mention that he’s not Oxbridge – he went to Durham – and “holds no particular candle for any university”.

Of course, such lists are hardly science and cannot, as the work of one journalist, be anywhere near definitive. It’s also entirely fair for readers to post in questions and criticism, whether we agree with it or not.

Anyway, since we’re on the subject of elitism at the Bar, it will be interesting to see how the profession fares in the first of the four-part documentary tonight on the BBC. I guess it can’t make the Bar look any worse than that guy on The Apprentice.