"When I grow up I'm going to be a barrister, like Daddy"

Back in the olden days (er, the early 1990’s) a group of women barristers approached the Victorian Bar Council about forming a Women Barristers Association. Some of our learned friends were enthusiastic about the idea, but others grumbled about ‘those feminists’ and wondered aloud whether there should thus also be a Men Barristers Association. The retort echoed through Owen Dixon Chambers “there already is a male barristers association, it is called the Bar!”

In today’s paper are two reports about people trying to do things differently at the Bar, both involving barristers’ clerks  “Trailblazer Norman O’Bryan meets resistance”  and “Outsider finds Bar a closed shop for clerks”

So is the Bar an Old Boys Club?