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Unfortunately, the human rights problem is alive and well. To those who can't believe that a solicitor could be clueless on human rights law, my experience in the UK and Canada suggests that the problem isn't a whole lot different in the legal profession than it is in society at large.

Just the latest example: in the past few months, in an job interview with a senior solicitor from a magic circle background, I was asked flat out how old I am. That's jaw-dropping. And before anyone says it might have been idle curiosity: there is *no such thing* as idle curiosity in a job interview question. Even absent an intention to use the information in an overtly discriminatory way, every question has some purpose.

In previous interviews, I have been asked about marital status, kids and ethnic background. In my experience, these kinds of illegal (or at least problematic) questions are *more* likely in a law firm interview than in an interview with another kind of company. Maybe law firms are more likely to assume that their people already know what's allowed and what's not, while non-law-firm companies don't assume it and provide training instead.

Solicitors do not come with human rights knowledge pre-installed. I doubt that adding a "human rights training" tick box will change that, but that's not the same as saying the problem doesn't exist.

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