Page 93 - Judicial Diversity Update report

c) The JAC should conduct an in-depth expert
review of their appointment processes, looking
beyond ‘best practice’ to focussing on the
reasons for differential attainment by differential
groups.
d) To improve panel composition and training:
i. The Judicial Office should seek to ensure
diversity of judicial panel members, as
well as those that assist with drafting
materials and the sift.
ii. The JAC should consider increasing
numbers of women, BAME and solicitor
lay panel members, with a view to
balancing out the likely lack of diversity
in judicial panel members.
e) The judiciary and professional bodies should be
actively engaged in talent spotting of suitable
women, solicitors and BAME lawyers, providing
them with specific guidance and mentoring on
building the requisite experience for an
application.
f) The JAC and senior judiciary should stop using
the ‘working age population’ as a contextual
comparator and opt for the more suitable
comparator of the pool of legal professionals.
1. BAME a) Efforts need to be made to recruit talented
BAME jurists to the High Court and the Court of
Appeal from outside the sitting judiciary.
2. Low application a) More needs to be done to highlight senior
rates from appointments of solicitors to the High Court and
solicitors Circuit bench from 2017–2019.

b) The reasons why solicitors are not succeeding in
the exercises needs to be thoroughly investigated,
as failure rates are likely to deter potential
solicitor candidates.
c) The judiciary and relevant agencies (for example,
the Solicitor Judges’ Division of The Law
Society) should raise awareness of the possibility
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