There are more Oxbridge-educated barristers than ever before, and the profession is recruiting many more students with first-class honours degrees, a survey has found.
Nearly half — 45 per cent — of young barristers qualified in the past three years went to Oxbridge, up from 35 per cent two years ago, while 41 per cent of the new recruits have first-class honours degrees.
The figures, part of a snapshot of barristers’ working lives, come despite efforts in recent years to open up the Bar to non-traditional universities. Across the profession, 56 per cent went to state schools and 44 per cent to fee-paying schools, the same as in 2011, when the last survey was done.
Increasingly, however, new entrants are educated at Oxford or Cambridge: