I just realised that today is the 10th anniversary of my first day in practice as a tenant at the Bar.
I have been thinking recently how lucky I am to be in the job I do, and how pleased my 10-year-ago self would have been to see where I have got to today
I have been thinking recently how lucky I am to be in the job I do, and how pleased my 10-year-ago self would have been to see where I have got to today
But it has taken me a long time an a huge amount of graft to get here. Nothing came easily - I spent 2 years looking for pupillage, paralegalled, got knocked back 22 times before getting one offer. I have travelled the UK for years at county courts getting better at what I do
When I have people on work experience or do events where I'm talking about my route into the Bar, I usually advise people not to bother trying to follow my path, because it's been a bit odd and circuitous. I didn't plan it, or at least not in any great detail. Stuff happens!
For me, becoming a barrister was never 100% about the Bar, it was about the wider project of being a human rights advocate. That's why I have spent such a large proportion of my time setting up @ukhumanrightsb (also almost 10 years ago), writing, doing media...
... and from 2015-18 spending about half of my working days building @rights_info. I didn't really plan it but the rise of social media around the same time as I was a junior barrister was a perfect opportunity to build a unique kind of career.
I'm hugely grateful for all of the amazing people I have met along the way, all the way from law school, through my first chambers @1CrownOfficeRow where I was for 9 years, to my amazing new(ish) colleagues at @DoughtyStreet
I don't have any particularly sparkling words of wisdom - perhaps only to say that the Bar is a tough profession, nobody finds it easy, it's physically demanding, you have to have extremely thick skin and imposter syndrome is rife (I certainly suffer from it)
But, speaking as a human rights barrister, once you get the balance right between work and everything else, and if you can build the right practice for you, it can be extremely rewarding, intellectually challenging and endlessly interesting and even surprising.
For those starting out on their pupillage journeys today, I did some tips ( ), my final word would be that this is the start of a long and unpredictable journey. I don't think any of my friends from bar school are still at the chambers they did pupillage at
Keep calm, ask for advice (feel free to drop me an email, I will answer!), be humble, be nice to your contemporaries, keep an open mind, and remember that barristers write their own web profiles so don't take them too seriously or obsess over them 😉 - good luck and bon voyage!
