22 January 2008
Her Majesty The Queen has approved the appointment of 98 new Queen's Counsel.
There were 333 applications for Silk in 2007. 51 applications were from women (15.3%), 22 from ethnic minority lawyers (6.6%), six from employed barristers (1.8%) and six from solicitors (1.8%).
Of the 98 appointed (29.4% of all applicants), 20 are women (39.2% of female applicants), four are from an ethnic minority (18.2% of ethnic minority applicants), and one is a solicitor (16.7% of all solicitor applicants).
In 2006, the comparable figures were that 443 people applied. Of the 175 appointed (39.5% of all applicants), 33 were women (48.5% of all female applicants), 10 were from an ethnic minority background (41.7% of ethnic minority applicants) and four solicitors were appointed (33.3% of all solicitor applicants).
The rank of Queen's Counsel will be formally conferred at a ceremony in Westminster Hall on 28 March.
- Queen's Counsel in England and Wales, 2008 [PDF 0.04mb, 3 pages]
- Queen's Counsel in England and Wales - comparative statistical information [PDF 0.20mb, 2 pages]
Notes to editors
1. The interim scheme was established following the government's consultation in 2003, Constitutional reform: the future of Queen's Counsel. In light of the consultation, Ministers concluded that they should no longer carry out the task of identifying individual Queen's Counsel, and the legal professions in England and Wales and Northern Ireland agreed to take over that responsibility. They jointly devised a new selection process during 2004, using a framework of defined competencies aimed at identifying excellence in senior advocates. Separate Selection Panels for England and Wales and Northern Ireland were established in early 2005. These are independent of both government and the professions.
2. Applications for this round of appointments were invited in England and Wales in December 2006 and the Panel began its work as soon as applications closed in January 2007. The Panel made its recommendations to the Secretary of State in October 2007 and the Secretary of State, accepting the Panel's advice, made his recommendations to Her Majesty in December.
3. A full breakdown of the latest applications and appointments, along with equivalent figures from previous years, is attached. It should be noted that, because the system of appointments used before 2003 was very different from the current one, meaningful statistical comparisons are unlikely to be possible.
4. The award ceremony in Westminster Hall is invitation-only.
5. This scheme is known as an 'interim scheme' because the future of the Queen's Counsel rank has not yet been finally determined. Although the aim of the 2003 consultation was to decide whether the rank should be retained, there was not enough evidence in the responses to allow a decision to be made. A Ministry of Justice study of quality marks in the legal services market has found that further research needs to be carried out, looking at the value of the QC rank in the international market for legal services, before a final decision can be taken. The new oversight regulator, the Legal Services Board, may wish to undertake research in this area once it is established.
6. Details of the competency framework and the selection process can be obtained from the QC appointments website.