20 years on: KC Appointments Ltd and the Independent KC Selection Panel

James Hand, Associate Professor in Law, University of Portsmouth

Keywords:  Legal Profession, King’s Counsel, England & Wales

This year saw the completion of the 20th round of appointments in England & Wales to the ranks of King’s / Queen’s Counsel run by KC (formerly QC) Appointments Ltd and its independent selection panel. Before the 2005/06 round, applications would be made to the Lord Chancellor, at one time by letter and in later decades, as noted by Megarry (p. 7), by application form, aided by 16 pages of guidance. Concerns about secret soundings, taps on the shoulder, unrepresentativeness and the role of Lord Chancellor led to change.

When looking at reform, the Government decided not to abolish the rank, not least because, to quote Lord Falconer LC at the time, ‘there was considerable evidence that it benefited the market—in particular, so far as concerned the international business that came to London in relation to legal services’, preferring instead to  cede decision making about who should become a QC ‘to the professions—namely, solicitors and the Bar—as opposed to the Government.’ While the Lord Chancellor is still formally and ceremoniously involved, passing the names to the monarch and presiding over the formal ‘silk’ ceremony, he has no involvement in the decision-making for the annual round, that now being the province of the independent selection panel.

The KC Selection Panel are supported by a, currently, five-person secretariat employed by KC Appointments Ltd, a company limited by guarantee whose sole members are The General Council of the Bar and the Law Society of England & Wales, and whose primary purpose is to support the panel’s process and assist ‘in serving the public interest by offering a fair and transparent means of identifying excellence in advocacy in the higher courts’ (3.1.1 of the MoA). 

The new process was designed to be self-funding (after initial support from the two members) and focussed on specific competences, first seven and then five from 2007 on:

• Understanding and using the law,

• Oral and written advocacy,

• Working with others,

• Diversity, and

• Integrity.

References would still be called, but there would be no automatic consultees or judicial veto. Instead, applicants are asked to provide the names of potential judicial, practitioner and client assessors/referees. While this was designed to increase the pool of applicants, and while approaches to diversity are one of the competences, the panel themselves do not operate on any quota system, emphasising, for example, that decisions ‘on who to recommend for appointment are based entirely on evidence of excellence provided by applicants in their self-assessment and at interview, and from assessors’. 

The new process, along with wider changes, may have contributed to the modest increase in successful solicitor-advocate applications, from eight beforehand, an average of one a year since they became eligible (Gibbs), to 58 under the panel (averaging just under three a year) and the more marked increase in women’s representation. Women accounted for 10% of appointments in the decade before the new system and average 25% so far after implementation – with the first decade averaging 20% and the second 30%; although Blackwell’s 2015 study, calculating the expected chance of e.g. ‘an Oxbridge graduate who remained in an average set between their twelfth and thirty-fifth year post call’, suggested there had been ‘very little improvement’ for women.

The Panel

The panel is comprised of retired senior judges, senior barristers and solicitors, and lay members. Originally nine members strong, with four lay members and one retired judicial member, the numbers have changed over the years, increasing to 11 in 2021, with five lay members and two retired judges alongside two barristers and two solicitors.

As of the most recent completed competition, a total of 56 people have served on the panel, with panel members, other than the chairs, serving between one and six competitions (and averaging 3.5). There have so far been six chairs, all but one of whom have been non-legal members (Baroness Butler-Sloss having acted as interim chairman in 2008-09), with the last three serving for five years on top of earlier panel membership. The composition of the panel over the years is close to gender parity with 48% women and 52% men, but while half of the panels have had a majority of women, there was a period of five years (2013-14 – 2017-18) when the panels were 70%-80% male.

Between them, according to the Panel’s annual reports, they have received over 5,000 applications over the years and conducted over 3,000 interviews (usually undertaken by two-member panels) and recommended the appointment of over 2,000 applicants. The number of applications, interviews and awards fluctuates but there have generally been 200-300+ applications a round (a reduction of just under 50% on the decade preceding the change, which suggests the clearer criteria may have both broadened the field and, together with the fees, led to more considered applications), 150-200 interviews (while the average is around two-thirds of applicants, the percentage has dropped to 45%-55% in the last five rounds) and around 80-120 appointments (around 30%-45% of applicants and 60%-66% of interviewees).

The Price

Fees are payable both on application and appointment and so the income of KC Appointments Ltd also fluctuates. The fees charged, as with the workings of the process, are regularly reviewed. The application fee was set at £1,800 for the 2006 round and sharply increased to £2,500 for the next round, after which it slowly declined, plateauing back to £1,800 for 2014-2021. While it has subsequently gone up each year, it is currently under £2,300. The appointment fee was set between £3,000 and £3,500 for most of the competitions (in a broadly similar pattern to the application fee), rising to £3,600 and £3,900 in 2024 and 2025.

In 2017, a scheme was introduced allowing those with ‘low’ earnings (defined first as under £60,000 then £90,000 per year) to pay half the standard rate which, save for the two main Covid years, has been taken up by under 3% of applicants. Based on figures taken from the selection panel reports, the 20 competitions have seen over £17.5 million pounds in fees, with annual fee income topping £1 million in 2024/25 and 2025/26 for the first time since the first two competitions (with a low of £0.65 million in 2012).

The financial reporting period does not fully coincide with the panel reports, but the annual directors’ reports show similar income while recording an operating loss in seven out of the 20 years, including the five years up to 2024, leading to a cumulative net 20-year profit of a little over £0.75 million and contributing over £300,000 in corporation tax. Staff costs have generally amounted to 20%-30% of the operating expenses, with the General Council of the Bar and the Law Society taking a management fee of £25,000 (around 5%-7.5%) and the Bar Council also charging £7,000 per annum for secretarial and accounting support.

As the panel enters its third decade, with income and costs set to continue at over a million pounds a year, it is not an inexpensive business. But transparency of cost and process and independence have significant value.