The master of the rolls today called on lawyers and judges at all levels to think more about how their conversation may be inadvertently excluding people in the sector.

Sir Geoffrey Vos told a Legal Services Board conference that women and people from different ethnic and social backgrounds ‘are not always made to feel welcome and included’ in the legal working environment.

Certain groups felt excluded partly because they cannot relate to what colleagues are talking about, he said, stressing that it was everyone’s responsibility to ensure that social situations are tailored for all.

‘A pervasive problem is accidental or unthinking exclusion,’ Vos told the Reshaping Legal Services event. ‘Lawyers tend to be more upfront than members of some other professions. Lawyers tend – and I don’t mean to be rude – sometimes to like the sound of their own voices and fail to see themselves as others see them. This is problematic for inclusion. It is a characteristic in white men and dare I say it older white men.’

Vos said women and people from diverse backgrounds were more likely to have caring responsibilities and less time to socialise with colleagues. Given that they may feel excluded from the social side of working for a law firm, it was even more important to ensure inclusion within the workplace.

Vos said making an effort to include everyone ‘should be an active choice for us all’, and that if white male lawyers are talking about subjects that do not interest everyone then that increases exclusion. He gave the example of women being less interested than men in sport and people from lower social backgrounds not necessarily wanting to talk about life in elite schools or universities.

There were similar issues in the judiciary, he conceded, where break rooms are often filled with judges talking about ‘Oxford, cricket, and the latest operatic production at Covent Garden’, to the exclusion of others. ‘Many simply do not realise that exclusion is going on,’ he said.

The master of the rolls was reluctant to ask regulators to make equality and diversity training mandatory, but suggested that some training for everyone would be beneficial.

‘My own experience is there is no substitute for face-to-face training and confronting the issues,’ he said. ‘You only address those problems if someone says "do you know how you behave in a particular situation? You could behave better".

‘You have to explain to people why it is so important for them to understand this question. Diversity is not just for the sake of it – it is not for some ethereal principle, it is better for our society if we include everyone.’

 

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