Gideon Habel argues structural reforms are needed to address overrepresentation within the legal sector.
In March 2021, my Leigh Day colleague, Emma Walker, and I wrote in these pages about the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) publication of long-awaited statistics on the diversity profile of those subject to its disciplinary activities.
We explained that, depressingly, those statistics also revealed long-standing concerns over the SRA’s enforcement activities: that the decades-old overrepresentation of individuals from what the SRA describes as “BAME” backgrounds in the regulatory process continues unabated.
This was the case despite the fact the 2014 Independent Comparative Case Review (ICCR) made the 45 recommendations to the SRA as to how to improve matters and the steps the SRA set out, in a f...
“…the SRA has presented no data to demonstrate credibly that, once ear-marked for investigation, solicitors from BAME backgrounds suffer no disproportionate treatment...”
