A Bar of all and for all? Examining the financial and professional impacts of upward social mobility at the independent Bar.

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My proposed doctoral project offers a mixed-methods examination of upward social mobility into the English Bar, exploring the extent to which barristers' socio-economic background is associated with income and professional prestige. Using group-level survey data held by the Bar Council collected through the annual certification process to which barristers must submit, this study will investigate the impact of indicators of social class, such as parental education and secondary school attended, on income, practice area, and seniority. This will be triangulated with qualitative accounts of the experiences of those who have achieved upward mobility, and with discourse analysis of evaluations of expertise made by clients and published in legal directories.