Solicitors outperformed barristers in two selection exercises for the judiciary completed earlier this year, the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) has revealed.

Eleven solicitors and eight barristers were selected as district judges (magistrates’ court) and 14 solicitors and 11 barristers as lawyer chairmen of the Residential Property Tribunal Service, all in selection exercises completed between April and September 2011.

Women also performed strongly, making up 43% of the total of 478 judicial appointments this year.

Black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates performed strongly in the selection exercise for lawyer chairmen of the Residential Property Tribunal Service, accounting for six (21%) of the 28 appointments.

JAC chairman Christopher Stephens stressed that despite the encouraging figures, published in the commission’s December statistics bulletin, solicitors were still not properly represented on the bench. ‘Sol­icitor selections will improve only if more apply for judicial roles and are given the opportunity to do so by their firms,’ he said.

The Law Society’s head of equality and diversity, Pat Corcoran, warned against complacency: ‘The JAC process has come under much scrutiny and is now more transparent than ever before, but how convinced is the judiciary about the benefits of diversity? The judiciary believes that its present structure is based solely on meritocracy, and that the best is always manifestly the best. This reinforces an almost unconscious bias to appoint in its own image.’

Meanwhile, former lord chief justices Woolf of England and Wales, and Carswell of Northern Ireland, last week warned the House of Lords constitution committee that any changes to the present system of judicial appointments should ‘go forward with caution’.

Former JAC chair Baroness Prashar, also giving evidence to the committee, said that the JAC’s role was to widen the pool of people applying for judicial posts, but she said she was opposed to any parliamentary role in judicial appointments.

In a forthright defence of the commission’s independence from government, she said: ‘The JAC is already accountable. When chairwoman, I appeared four times before parliamentary committees and the JAC produces an annual report. We must preserve our independence from the executive.’