Justice for Ethnic Minority Lawyers

A report, published by Lord Ouseley this week, showed that black and minority ethnic lawyers are disproportionately targeted by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

It highlights the continuing presence of discrimination in many areas of society,and that much work is still needed before organisations like the SRA can claim to be truly fair and even-handed.

As both a lawyer and a member of the government's 14-strong Black,Asian and Minority Ethnic Women Councillors' Taskforce, I felt it was important that I responded to this report.

I would like to see the Law Society, the SRA and organisations representing BME solicitors work together to tackle these problems and show other organisations what can be done.

Rather shockingly, the Ouseley Review found 'evidence of some stereotyping' within the SRA, which led to an assumption of guilt in respect of lawyers from some communities even before an investigation had begun. It also pointed to the focus of regulation on sole practitioners (a higher proportion of black and Asian lawyers are sole practitioners) as a reason for this discrimination.

It found evidence of a greater proportion of BME solicitors referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Board, a greater proportion of cases where a decision was made to intervene in the practice and a disproportionate number barred from student applications or admission to the roll.

While making clear its findings of institutional racism, the report also makes a broad range of recommendations to help eliminate this,from applying equality and diversity strategies to working with the Law Society to develop better systems of support and guidance.

The upside of this review is that it's clear that the public sector equality duties, which have led to impact assessments being carried out, are leading to proper investigation of practices that would previously remain hidden - something that members of the public suspect but cannot establish.

It also reveals how affected we all are by stereotypes of different communities and how this affects the ability of people to be scrupulously fair. Being fair and even-handed is something that we in the UK pride ourselves on and I hope that this report will lead to consideration as to how we can surmount this problem if we are to be a fair multi-cultural society.

For the legal profession it also raises other issues - why do more ethnic minorities become sole practitioners? What are the barriers to them achieving success in larger firms and how can this be tackled? Do sole practitioners require greater assistance and support?

This issue of support and guidance is of increasing importance as fees for legal aid practitioners are cut and lawyers in this sector, who are disproportionately BME, will have to operate on lower incomes.

There is a lot more work to be done to address these issues as well as the disproportionate representation in certain aspects of work of the SRA. I hope to see the Law Society, the SRA and organizations representing BME solicitors work together to tackle these problems and show other organisations what can be done.