In May of 2023, WiCCD became alarmed about another wave of women leaving criminal defence, mostly to go over to the Crown’s office – who can blame them? Nobody can and nobody should.

Women are leaving criminal defence in significant numbers, particularly more senior women. This leaves our junior women members without mentorship from senior women counsel in our bar.

Women are leaving to go over to the Crown’s office because they are being recruited, because the pay is so much better, for pensions, disability coverage and vacations. Well paid maternity / parental leave. Less abuse by other justice system participants. More respect from everyone involved.

The two main factors driving women out of criminal defence are the intolerably low rates of compensation from legal aid plans and profound disrespect for women defence lawyers, including implicit gender bias and online harassment.

We don’t share comments by our members here – those are kept confidential.

This anonymous survey was run over the course of a couple of weeks – there were about 80 respondents.

Here are the graphic results for some of the questions we asked.