As a female, non-white, non-Oxbridge, state-school educated barrister, I am in the minority of those at the Bar in any number of ways. In fact, if I had a fiver for each time a client said to me “You don’t look like a barrister”, I could probably retire from practice altogether.
However, one thing I am most definitely – and unfashionably – is middle-class (my father is an engineer, my mother a solicitor). I, like my parents, have entered a very middle-class profession. The recently published report on fair access to the professions criticised the lack of social mobility in the UK, in particular the fact that “access to the professions is becoming the preserve of those from a smaller and smaller part of the social spectrum.”
