We are a diverse, multidisciplinary set of Chambers with an established reputation for providing excellent legal services in our numerous fields of practice.
We are committed to promoting a progressive, welcoming, inclusive environment for members, employees and pupils. We appreciate that when people drawn from different backgrounds and viewpoints work together we maximise benefit – for our clients, chambers and the wider community. The interests of our clients are central to all that we do, and we recognise that providing first class legal advice and advocacy, along with helping to protect our clients from the stress of litigation, are our core functions.
7BR seeks to foster and create an inclusive environment and to improve accessibility for all. Reasonable adjustments recently undertaken at 7BR include:
We are socially and environmentally aware, providing facilities and encouragement to those who walk, run and cycle to work and to those who are attempting to create a paper-free practice. We support a number of charities and those members and employees who engage in charitable work. Members have been closely involved with the work of the Bar Council, the Inns of Court and Free Representation Unit, and have been nominated for and won awards for promoting the interests of minority groups.
We support diversity, inclusion, social mobility, fairness and development. Our past and present members bear testament to this, encompassing male and female senior juniors, silks and senior members of the judiciary from different cultural, ethnic and educational backgrounds.
Lord Judge (former Lord Chief Justice) and Lord Lane (former Lord Chief Justice) were members of these Chambers during their time at the Bar; as was Lord Justice Goldring (former Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales, and Coroner of Hillsborough Inquests March 2014 – April 2015). HHJ Joan Butler QC was our first female tenant in Chambers in 1977, and is one of a number of women across all practice areas to be appointed silk within the history of Chambers. HHJ Ebraham Mooncey was our first member of an ethnic minority to join Chambers, and we take pride in his career.
We benefit from first class seminar facilities within our premises and are committed to promoting and sharing best practices within our areas of legal expertise. We regularly organise educational and inter disciplinary events to stimulate discussion and professional development for all.
We are involved in the Middle Temple Access to the Bar Scheme and the Inner Temple PASS Scheme (Pegasus Access and Support Scheme), which aim to ameliorate disadvantage encountered disproportionately by some students by offering work experience to students selected by the Inns under those schemes.
We are proud to have award winning barristers amongst the field of diversity and inclusion, most recently, Dr Gregory Burke, the founder of the UK’s largest disability – access information website, AccessAble and who has been awarded the Chambers Award 2019 for Outstanding Contribution to Diversity & Inclusion.
We are also a sponsor of the First 100 Years Project celebrating the first 100 years of women in law.
In conjunction with others we have sponsored the publication of a book produced by First 100 years to celebrate the achievement of women during the first century of women lawyers.
We have also commissioned a portrait to celebrate the achievements of Lady Justice Thirlwall, incoming Senior Presiding Judge of England and Wales, who we are proud to say was a member of these Chambers from pupillage until appointment to the judiciary.
We relish the achievements of the last century; and look forward to the challenges of the next. Fair allocation of work, the gender pay gap, lack of representation of ethnic minorities in leadership roles within the Bar and judiciary and the need for a Bar of all, for all, remains a challenge across the Bar as a whole. At 7BR we seek to understand diversity and to promote active solutions to inequality wherever we can.