Kate Davenport QC praises new development for gender equity

The New Zealand Bar Association is setting up a new committee to look at how to get greater gender equity in briefing practices. As part of its work it will promote the equitable briefing policy which aims to maximise choices for legal practitioners and their clients, promote the full use of the Independent Bar and optimise opportunities for practice development of all counsel.

Kate Davenport QC chaired the New Zealand Bar Association Equitable Briefing Policy Committee when the policy was established 7 years ago. She says that the aim of the policy is to try and encourage those people who brief the bar to widen the briefing pool “and to make a conscious effort, when they are thinking about briefing, to think: “Who shall I send it to?” and not just send it to the same person or the same set of people again and again.” She would like to see those people who brief the bar to have a list of counsel that includes both women and men. “We all are guilty of that very comfortable feeling of just sending it to those people we have used before”, she says.

See: New Zealand Law Society or LawTalk.

News 26 Apr, 2016