Legal pecking order
A set of chambers has sparked debate on LinkedIn after appearing to suggest that barristers sit higher than solicitors in the legal food chain.
In a screenshot (embedded below), purportedly taken from the unnamed set’s website and later shared on LinkedIn, the chambers poses the rather evocative question: “Is a barrister higher up than a solicitor?”
Helpfully — or provocatively, depending on your allegiances — the chambers then answers its own question. Look away now, solicitors. It asserts that barristers are “generally considered more senior” within the UK legal system.
To its credit, the chambers does row back slightly, clarifying that the relationship is “not strictly hierarchical”. Instead, it draws the distinction that barristers focus on advocacy in the “higher courts”, while solicitors handle the “day-to-day” legal work.
Solicitor Heledd Wyn, who shared the post, threw the question open to the profession, inviting fellow lawyers, whatever their branch, level or seniority, to have their say.
She also offered a pointed aside. “[I]f you recognise the content and it’s your chambers — maybe have a think about the wording and those who generally instruct you? 🙋♀️”
Law firm marketing guru Simon Marshall weighed in below the line, arguing that “apart from being wrong, it fails on the most basic level of marketing: understanding our audience”.
RPC partner Peter Mansfield also joined the debate, suggesting that he understood what the chambers was trying to convey, “namely that most clients will first instruct a solicitor, who may then instruct a barrister,” but adding that “they just say it in the worst way possible”.
Solicitor Stacey Bryant likewise weighed in, commenting that the chambers would probably have been better off saying that “‘there is a common misconception that barristers are considered more senior within the British legal system’ and then explain the actual difference”.
“There are definitely barristers who I would absolutely consider far more knowledgeable to me in COP and whose specialist knowledge I would defer to”, she continued. “I suppose it then depends how the word senior is used. Senior can be in terms of age, knowledge or hierarchy. This is poorly worded which is interesting for set of chambers website.”
Meanwhile, Gemma Spratt, a chartered legal executive at DWF, offered her “unpopular” view, saying that she does consider barristers to be more senior than “all lawyers”, just as judges are generally regarded as more senior than them. “The legal profession is a hierarchical system,” she wrote.
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