What is DoW?
Fair allocation of work is about transparency and trust, particularly ensuring that all members of Chambers have access to work and access to marketing opportunities. For it to work it must become park of the normal workflow in the clerks’ room.
The objective of this report is to provide Chambers with readily accessible data from which they can easily identify ‘anomalies’ in the allocation of work compared with the make-up of Chambers across several protected characteristics.
Data Considerations
Opportunity Data
Where we are asked to consider opportunities, we have chosen to use Requests & Offers. This type of reporting cannot provide financial data since individual barristers may be requested and or offered multiple times on a single case. It should also be noted that a barrister being suggested for many cases doesn’t necessarily correlate with revenue.
Financial Data
Where monetary values are required to be reported upon, we have chosen to use Work Done because it is universal across work types. E.g. using payments received could distort the true position for practitioners who undertake a high volume of pay on conclusion work by comparison with a direct access practitioner.
Chambers Demographic
To satisfy the regulatory requirements we aim to incorporate analysis of each data type alongside the sample demographic, facilitating digestible identification of anomalies and take account of barristers’ target areas of practice.
Scope of Reporting Amendments
Sex / Demographic Comparison
Ethnicity / Demographic Comparison [Asian | Black | Mixed | Other | White.]
Disability / Demographic Comparison
The DoW Report
The Distribution Of Work Report shows all barristers (optionally inactive, external, etc.), including their Gender (will be renamed to Sex in the next point release), Ethnic Group (which is like a simplified version of the Ethnic Origin group) and Disability, and Target DoW Practice Areas, and joins that data to their Work Done (grouped by BMIF Class) for the date range.
The export shows more information than the on-screen report, and can be readily used to create pivot tables in Excel, should clients wish to do so.
The report provides a snapshot of work done directly compared to Chambers diversity demographic, optionally detailing work barristers express an interest in whether they've done work or not.
The Work Done column shows that the 3-8 Years Call, Not yet completed group did 87.2% value of the Other work done, Males doing the rest (12.8%). (Do I need a push to get more barristers to respond to the EDI Questionnaire?)
That compares to the Sample where Males made up 50% of the demographic who did work (are they being given worse-paying work?).
Of the three 3-8 Years Call barristers who Target Crime, two (66.67%) of them are Males, one (33.33%) is Not yet completed. However, 100% of the Work Done was by Males. (Are clerks favouring the males?)
The baseline data is obviously open to interpretation and there is nothing to prove that the Male barristers who target Crime are the same as those actually doing the work but what the data provides is a simple way to alert EDI officers to potential areas requiring attention.
Note that, over a given time period, a barrister could cross over Banding groups (they may be 8+ Years Call on the start date of the report and 0-9 Years Silk when the report is run) - so there is a Banding As At option on the report to select Report Run Date or Report Start Date. This means that a barrister's Call Band on the report may not match their Current Band field on the Barrister record.
Further note that the output shows work done by “Active BMIF Classes”, bucketing work done falling into an inactive BMIF Class as “Other”. Therefore, ensure that the headline “Classes” of work you wish to report on are active and all others are inactive otherwise you’ll have a huge report.
Changes to Barrister Profile
Added “PQE Date” and “ADR Date” to barrister record. The ADR date is intended to be applied to KC records when they solely undertake ADR work to separate them from other KCs.
Note that you need to check the system option to “Use PQE Date” for this to be effective in reporting. With the option enabled, LEX will calculate “Current Banding” based on ADR Date if present, else on Date of Silk, else on PQE Date, else on Date of Call.
Added “Target DoW Practice Areas” field to Barrister profile.
Use this field to store areas of practice (based on Active BMIF Classes) the barrister has expressed interest in. This is not required for the report to work; it is optional.
Added “Exclude from Distribution of Work Report boolean to “System Settings” section.
Check this for barristers who should be excluded from the report regardless of report options.
System Options
To take advantage of the new ‘banding hierarchy’, ensure that the system option to “Use PQE date” is enabled. System Options > Reporting Options > General Report Options > “Use Barrister PQE Date for Banding”.
Preparing your LEX system for DoW Reporting
- Ensure Barristers have a “Date of Call” or “PQE Date” and that banding is configured within system options.
- Ensure Barristers have Gender / Disability / Ethnic Group data stored on their profile.
- Ensure you have assigned a BMIF Class to all BMIF Areas of Practice and that all cases have a BMIF Area of Practice assigned. You can review the assignment of BMIF Class to BMIF Areas of Practice via “Configuration > Codes & Types > BMIF Code Editor.
- Finally, ensure that you have flagged each of the barristers within the sample with “Target Areas of Practice”. They may or may not have worked in these areas.
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