Gender and Ethnic Intersectionality in Solicitors’ Careers, 1970 to 2016

This article provides new insights into the intersection of gender and ethnic inequalities in the solicitors’ profession. Using administrative records spanning the entire population of practising solicitors in England and Wales, we analyse structural changes over successive cohorts of solicitors and identify four distinctive employment profiles: high-street solicitors, city solicitors, corporate fast-track and in-house. We show how solicitors with single or multiple characteristics associated with disadvantage are located in different employment profiles and how this changes over time. Demonstrating originality and the value of an intersectional analysis, we find that while ethnic stratification within solicitor careers decreases, stratification by gender remains constant. We find that in a period of rapid expansion, minority ethnic men become much better integrated into the most prestigious career profile in the profession – the corporate fast-track – compared with white women who are both earlier entrants to and numerically dominant in the profession.