An important paper has just been published on this issue and I would urge everyone who cares about gender representation in the legal profession to review it.

I encourage everyone to read this article.

available here: 

The Closed Door at 301 Wellington Street

TOM NICHINI & KIM BROOKS*

Although women and racialized lawyers comprise significant proportions of the Canadian
bar, they and other equity-deserving lawyers remain markedly underrepresented among
counsel making oral submissions before the Supreme Court of Canada. This article
presents findings from a five-year empirical study (2017-2021) examining who appears
before the Court through an observational analysis of 273 cases and a survey of 279
counsel. The research reveals that presenting counsel are predominantly white, cis -male,
and have extensive experience at the bar: e.g., women account for only 26.9% of appearing
counsel, while racialized lawyers comprise 12.8%. After evaluating whether this gap can
be attributed to experience deficits, the article dismisses alternative explanations,
including that diversity will improve with time or that equity-deserving lawyers lack
interest, and argues that discrimination within the legal profession is the most plausible
explanation. The article examines how bias from clients, courts, and employers operates
to exclude equity-deserving lawyers from elite litigation opportunities and proposes that
senior advocates must actively sponsor diverse counsel to argue before the Supreme Court