A cohort of 32 lawyers have been appointed High Court Judges this week. All apart from four are barristers. Just over one quarter of the new judges are women. Eight of them said they were the first or in the first generation of their family to attend university. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Burnett of Maldon, made the appointments this week, for a single fixed four-year term. The group, appointed following an open competition run by the Judicial Appointments Commission for lawyers with or without previous judicial experience, comprises nine women and 23 men.