Fountain Court’s Pledge
Fountain Court Chambers takes seriously its responsibility and obligations for promoting diversity amongst its members and staff. As part of its commitment to diversity, Fountain Court wishes to play a full part in improving the representation and experience of women at the Bar.
Chambers is proud of its initiatives and policies to support its female members and staff, including a long standing generous parental leave policy and flexible working policy, complemented by a clerking structure which helps to ensure that members’ practices are tailored to their professional and/or personal requirements.
Chambers strives to promote gender diversity in all parts of its organisation, as demonstrated by the fact that three of its senior staff (Head of Administration Julie Parker, and Deputy Senior Clerks Katie Szewczyk and Sian Huckett) are women, and three of Chambers’ KC appointments since 2019 have been female. In addition, our Chambers Practice Manager (Asia), based in Singapore, is female (Caroline McConnon).
Equality and diversity issues are overseen by our Equality and Diversity Officers, Tamara Oppenheimer KC and David Murray, supported by the Equality and Diversity Committee in which our Head of Administration and Deputy Senior Clerk participate. Significant equality and diversity initiatives, including this Pledge, are considered and approved by Chambers’ Management Committee.
Fountain Court has met the following targets which it set in June 2021 as part of its participation in the Women in Law Pledge:
Members’ practice issues
- By 2022, to formalise reporting on any pay gap patterns to the Senior Clerking team and Head of Chambers. Reports are prepared by the Deputy Senior Clerks and EDOs every 2 years. This is in addition to reporting on work allocation, which happens on a bi-annual basis.
- By July 2022, to conduct a review of marketing opportunities to ensure fair access to marketing opportunities for female members. This review is carried out annually, and has been built into Chambers’ monitoring protocols.
- To enhance our existing wider mentoring scheme in Chambers to ensure the retention of female members and to support their applications for silk, judicial positions, or other career advancements and to encourage female members to participate.
- To make the “My family care” support resource available for those with domestic caring commitments regardless of gender on a three year trial.
Work place culture / training
- To hold education sessions on women’s health issues and to encourage attendance by all members and staff regardless of gender.
Chambers also continues to implement the following targets which apply on an ongoing basis:
Chambers management and staff
- To ensure that Chambers’ management committee is always representative of the gender balance of Chambers’ membership.
- To support remote/flexible working for members and staff where it is not incompatible with Chambers’ business needs and requirements.
Recruitment
- To continue to participate in and support initiatives as part of Chambers’ aim to recruit people from underrepresented groups both to Fountain Court and the Commercial Bar as a whole. Current initiatives include a mentoring scheme for underrepresented groups created by six leading commercial chambers; Bridging the Bar (a mini-pupillage initiative); the Pathways to Law scheme run by Oxford University; the COMBAR scholarship; and a work experience programme offered to several inner-London schools.
- To maintain the proportion of female applicants for pupillage at approximately 50%.[1]
- To continue supporting female members in their applications for silk.
Work place culture/training
- To continue to hold education sessions on women’s health issues and to encourage attendance by all members and staff regardless of gender.
- To continue to organise equality and diversity training for all members and staff to ensure compliance with all relevant rules and best practice, with particular focus on those who are involved in recruitment.
[1] This is a new target adopted in February 2025.
