Despite making up over 40% of London’s population, Black and minority ethnic individuals remain starkly underrepresented at the Bar, with just 17.3% of barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds and only 10.8% reaching King’s Counsel level, according to the Bar Standards Board’s Diversity at the Bar Report. Bridging the Bar is tackling this disparity head-on, offering mentoring, internships, and advocacy training that makes candidates 2.5 times more likely to secure pupillage. We caught up with Ayesha Begum below, Business Development Assistant at Bridging the Bar, to learn more. Best Legal Support Initiative 2025 Bridging the Bar is a registered charity on a mission to increase access to the legal profession for individuals from underrepresented and marginalised backgrounds. Through its flagship Academy programme, Bridging the Bar provides practical, structured support that includes mentoring, advocacy training, internships, and mini-pupillages. Since its inception, the charity has delivered more than 5,000 hours of mentoring, facilitated more than 500 minipupillages, and secured 106 elite internships, including placements at the UK Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Bridging the Bar is centred in London, home to an incredibly diverse population. London has a population that is 41% Black and minority ethnic, four times more than the UK average. This positioning allows the charity to be local to a large proportion of its target audience, providing them with access to local opportunities that will help them in their journey to the Bar. But that is not all; Bridging the Bar is the only organisation actively working to increase diversity and opportunity at the Bar in a structured, practical, and sustained way. While other initiatives exist to support underrepresented candidates, none take the same hands-on approach to breaking down barriers at every stage of the journey. Bridging the Bar does not just raise awareness of the problem – the charity works to actively provide solutions. By offering targeted mentoring, securing high quality work experience, and working directly with chambers and institutions, the charity ensures that talented candidates have access to the same opportunities as their more privileged peers. “Our approach isn’t just about fixing the pipeline; it’s about changing the profession itself,” Ayesha told us. “We’ve built relationships with leading institutions to create pathways that simply didn’t exist before, making diversity and inclusion a shared responsibility rather than an afterthought. By directly addressing the systemic issues that have made the Bar one of the least diverse professions in the UK, we’re not just making incremental change – we’re setting a new standard for what real inclusion looks like.” With a central location in close proximity to various judicial institutions, the charity has been able to run and pilot internship programmes at the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the United Kingdom Supreme Court. Bridging the Bar is particularly proud to have collaborated with the UKSC in February 2021 to create the first ever paid internship programme – having now completed two successful cycles of the programme and agreeing with the UKSC to implement it once again. Looking ahead, Bridging the Bar aims to continue expanding the scope of its work to have an even greater impact on access to the profession. Many talented students from underrepresented backgrounds do not consider the Bar as a realistic career option, as they are not exposed to it in their formative years. Therefore, the charity aims to expand upon its university and postgraduate level programmes to deliver outreach, workshops, and tailored resources for younger groups, including secondary school and sixth form students, to provide students with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about pursuing a career in law. Founded in 2020, Bridging the Bar is a relatively young organisation and initially faced difficulties in demonstrating its credibility to potential supporters – especially within a sector already heavily oversubscribed with sponsorship requests. This challenge required significant effort from its team, who not only had to prove the value of the charity’s programmes but also establish genuine and lasting relationships with chambers and key stakeholders. Through consistent outreach, transparent communication, and delivering high quality initiatives, however, Bridging the Bar has gradually built a reputation that speaks for itself and earned itself the recognition of Best Legal Support Initiative 2025. “As a result, we are now in a much stronger position to secure funding from a growing number of chambers,” Ayesha shared. “What once felt like a major barrier has transformed into a foundation for long-term sustainability and growth. The challenge of recognition pushed us to refine our approach, build stronger partnerships, and ensure our impact is visible and those efforts are now opening new opportunities for expansion and deeper collaboration.” Contact: Ayesha Begum Company: Bridging the Bar Web Address: https://bridgingthebar.org/ AIM-Aug25134
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