The legal profession is healthily represented in this year’s ‘Pink List’, with three of its members bagging slots in the 101-strong list of influential gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people…
Leading the way at number 30 in the rankings — compiled by The Independent on Sunday — is Lord Justice Etherton. In 2008, Etherton became the first openly gay judge to be sworn in as a Lord Justice of Appeal, and went on to serve for five years in the Court of Appeal. He took up his current role as Chancellor of the High Court in January this year.
Hot on Etherton’s heels, at number 32, is Treasury Solicitor’s Department chief executive Sir Paul Jenkins. The barrister, who also heads the Government Legal Service (GLS), has spent all his professional life working as a government lawyer and is the most senior openly gay member of the civil service.
The final slot in the list goes to the UK’s first openly gay judge, Sir Adrian Fulford, who was out when he was called to the Bar back in 1978. Fulford, who is ranked in 46th place, was appointed as a Court of Appeal judge in May, having previously spent nine years as a judge of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Although lawyers’ presence in the list — which is in its 14th year — is pretty healthy, their number is actually slightly down on recent years. Etherton, Jenkins and Fulford have all featured before, but there was no place this time for media lawyer and blogger David Allen Green or CMS Cameron McKenna partner Daniel Winterfeldt, who appeared, respectively, in 2012 and 2011.