Queer Identity and Professionalism in Law:Who Gets to Decide?
A rainbow logo is easy. A workplace where you never have to edit yourself is the real test of inclusion.
Every June, companies and firms add pride flags to their logos. While this might be a welcome sign of celebration and support, it also raises the important question of whether it is genuine inclusion.
It's worth asking how inclusive the legal profession actually is behind that flag, and how it handles the tension between queer identity and the professionalism the field demands. This article explores how that tension plays out and what larger organisations and we can do about it.
What does “professionalism” really mean?
Professionalism appears to be a fairly neutral term, referring to how we present and conduct ourselves in the workplace. But is it actually neutral?
A 2023 study of queer barristers in England and Wales found that the "credible" barrister was quietly assumed to be heterosexual, and usually male. The point is not that sexuality is absent from professional life, but that one kind of sexuality, heterosexuality, is treated as the neutral default, while everything else reads as a departure from it.
So professionalism is already shaped by sexuality. The irony is that when diversity of sexuality becomes visible, it is the thing dismissed as "personal." And if straightness is the unspoken standard, then being professional starts to mean looking and behaving as straight as possible.
Legal scholar Kenji Yoshino describes this phenomenon as covering, where people feel pressure to downplay certain aspects of their identity in order to fit the dominant social and professional norms. Unlike exclusion where you are told you do not belong, covering is when you are subtly encouraged to belong by becoming less visible.
The Implicit Hierarchy
But not everyone can blend in, and no one should have to. Australian research on queer law students and graduates describes an "old guard" whose culture still shapes who feels they belong. Many of those interviewed sensed that the "typical" queer lawyer is imagined as a gay, white man. This matters because the experience is not the same for everyone who is queer. The idea of professionalism being narrow means the further you sit from it, in terms of race, gender, or how visibly you read as queer, the wider the gap you are asked to bridge. A gay white man already shares part of that norm, while a brown transgender woman, for example, would not. The point is not that any queer person has it "easy," but that this narrow image disadvantages some far more than others.
More Than a Diversity Hire
This is where a common assumption deserves a second look.
Some queer students see their identity as a quiet advantage, a way to "count as a diversity hire." On its face, that looks like progress. But it can defeat its own purpose.
Being hired to fill a quota means little if, once you are inside, you are expected to fold back into the same straight mould. You get through the door for being different, and then you are asked to act the same.
Real inclusion is the opposite of that bargain.
It means hiring queer people on merit, which they have in full, without any need for a quota. It also means building a workplace that actually lets them be themselves. While it is true that professional life does ask for some uniformity, uniformity is not the same as erasure.
There is a wide gap between "wear a suit" and "hide who you are."
Real inclusion lives in that gap, where you can look the part without erasing who you are.
Beyond the Rainbow Flag
None of this discredits the progress already being made.
The point is not to despair, but to make sure it continues, and that it carries queer people along with it rather than around them.
That work cannot fall solely on queer lawyers. Just seeking to work in safe environments is not the answer. That would force a choice no one should have to make, between feeling welcome and doing the work they actually love.
The real goal is a profession where that trade-off disappears.
Reaching it is the responsibility of organisations, too, and it has to go beyond a flag on a logo. It means reviewing policies for inclusive language, backing internal support networks, and offering proper training rather than one-off gestures.
A flag is a fine gesture, but it only means something if the culture behind it is real. That is something all of us, students and firms alike, can do together.
Our Message to Law Students
University is where many of us first absorb what a "professional" lawyer should look and sound like.
So it is important to pay attention now and question what standards are applied now. It is something every student can do and should do.
Regardless of where your legal career takes you, we all have a role in shaping the legal profession where professionalism is measured by integrity, competence and respect, not by conformity or the need to hide who you are.
And if you are queer yourself, know that the lanyard and the logo are not the ceiling. You can expect more, and ask for it.
You deserve more than visibility. You deserve belonging.
Written by Vishnu Bhat
Edited by Joan Lim and Shivaani Sivarajan