ABSTRACT
In February 2000, the African Caribbean and Asian Lawyers group hosted a debate, the title of which was ‘Is It Worth It?’, which was an acknowledgment of the difficulties faced by some Black and Asian solicitors and barristers in making inroads into the solicitors’ and barristers’ professions and finding spaces there for themselves. The resounding answer to this question was, in fact, ‘yes’; however, there was much discussion about the extent to which one’s ethnic identity had to be compromised in order to enter the legal profession and then survive once there; specifically, whether compromising one’s identity was justified by the ends, for example, by a greater representation of Black and Asian lawyers in the legal profession (on an
altruistic level) and (on a personal level) the procurement of an arguably lucrative job that had status.
