The sinister call to make barristers advance diversity and inclusion

As a barrister my professional duty is to provide the best legal advice outside of court and to represent my client’s interests fearlessly in court. For good and obvious reasons there are all sorts of things we are not allowed to do: mislead the court, discriminate between clients, handle clients’ money, and so on. Rather more nebulously, but perfectly reasonably, we are not allowed to bring the profession into disrepute. 

But the Bar Standards Board, the body that regulates – and disciplines – the profession wants to go much further and add a further positive duty to tackle ‘counter-inclusive misconduct.’ To this end it has proposed that individual barristers should have a duty to ‘act in a way that advances equality, diversity and inclusion.’

Once adopted – and I have little confidence that the Board’s consultation process will prevent its adoption – barristers will be under a professional duty to become social engineers.