December 8, 2021
RLConsultant Dame Linda Dobbs and RLC member Michelle Nelson QC have been featured in a new digital exhibition produced by The Inner Temple celebrating diversity at the Bar.
The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Sibghatullah Kadri who died on 2 November, 2021. He was a Barrister, the first Muslim male QC, Inner Temple Bencher, racial justice campaigner and co-founder of the Society of Black Lawyers. The exhibition has two purposes. Firstly, to record the past and highlight lawyers that were hidden away. Secondly to record the present and those women who come from diverse backgrounds being celebrated and reflected in images and stories reflecting the Bar.
Following a successful career at the Bar, in October 2004, Dame Linda Dobbs became the first non-white high court judge in the UK. At the Bar she was a member of, and chaired, a number of committees, including the Race Relations, Equal Opportunities, International, Professional Conduct and Professional Standard Committees. In 2003 she became the Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association where she set up its first Equality and Diversity sub-committee. Whilst on the High Court Bench she was the Senior Liaison Judge for Diversity, Chair of the Magisterial Committee of the Judicial Studies Board and Chair of the International Committee of the Judicial College and a Fawcett Commissioner.
In 2020, Dame Linda Dobbs launched new initiative RLConsulting- consulting services to law firms, governments, NGOs, corporations and institutions.
RLC member, Michelle Nelson QC is passionately committed to social justice and is a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust, and Chair of Ekaya Housing Association, a Housing Association set up for young single BME mothers. Previously she was trustee of Scene & Heard, a charity helping children in Somers Town to write and have performed plays. She is head of the Equality and Diversity Committee at Red Lion Chambers and in the past has sat on the Bar Council Race Relations Committee and on the Conduct and Complaints Committee.
In 2020, she founded SHIFT25 in partnership with ELBA in a response to Black Lives Matter. SHIFT25 is a campaign to ensure people of diverse backgrounds from East London working in business and education would see proper change and a ‘shift’ by 2025.
View Exhibition here: [Celebrating Diversity at the Bar – Inner Temple]