An Interview with Malvika Jaganmohan, St Ives Chambers

NB: Welcome to Malvika Jaganmohan from St Ives Chambers in Birmingham. I know that you are a family practitioner, Malvika. When did you begin tenancy?

MJ: I became a tenant at St Ives Chambers in Birmingham in November 2019.

NB: Did you always want to do what you are doing now?

MJ: I am definitely not one of those people who came out of the womb wanting to be a family barrister, that’s for sure. I did a law degree because I thought it would be an interesting degree to do, not neces­sarily because I wanted to be a lawyer at the end of it. I did consider becoming a solicitor in a big city firm because they were marketing left, right and centre on campus. Of course, it seemed very exciting, glamor­ous and inviting. After a few vacation schemes, very well-paid vacation schemes I should say, I decided it clearly wasn’t for me. So, I did mini­pupillages at a lot of Chambers in lots of different areas of law, and family law was what I really took to. I had already found it academically interesting. I had a fantastic tutor called Helen Reece, and aside from it just being this socially and politically fascinating area of law, it’s such a privilege to have access to the most intimate aspects of clients’ private lives. I loved the idea of being a barrister, but I was pretty scared about applying for pupillage because I knew the statistics were grim in terms of obtaining a pupillage. I enjoyed public speaking and I thought the Bar would be a good fit. I applied for a scholarship at my Inn and was

DOI: 10.4324/9781003111597-2 awarded a major scholarship which made the decision for me and gave me the confidence to do the Bar course and apply for pupillage because that financial risk was mitigated.

I applied for pupillage while I was at Bar School and was lucky enough to get it. There is a huge dose of luck involved in getting pupillage as well as hard work and aptitude, but I very much took my journey to the Bar year-by-year. I tried not to get my hopes up too much and I wasn’t one of those people who thought, if I can’t be a barrister, I can’t do anything else. I just wanted to do something meaningful, whether that was the Bar or something else. I’m very happy I’m a family barrister but when I was younger it wasn’t my dream job or anything like that.

NB: It is interesting to compare the routes people take. The reason why I chose to study law at university was (and I’m a little ashamed to say this really) because I couldn’t think of anything else to do that would interest me. That’s dreadful! I should have been driven and committed but I wasn’t, I was just interested. Like you, I did my law degree in London. I did a summer placement at a city solicitors’ firm after my second year, and that convinced me more than anything that I wanted to do crime.

MJ: I do wonder if I’d have had a different view on becoming a barrister versus a solicitor if I had shadowed some family solicitors. I was doing all this work experience in corporate and real estate. Having said that, now that I’m in practice I do think that I’m better suited to the Bar than to being a solicitor because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to have that level of client contact. It’s an exhausting job because of the nature of the work we do. Solicitors have that on-going, constant contact with the client whereas I have a professional barrier, which is the solicitor, and they tend to do the paperwork and the compliance with directions.

NB: Can I ask what sort of work your practice takes in? I think family practitioners tend to go into finance work or children work - is that right?

MJ: I think that’s a fair observation. I think some Chambers tend to do more children work, some Chambers tend to do more finance work, but some Chambers do a mix.

Part of the reason why I joined St Ives was so that I could do all areas of family law. I deal with applications under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996 (for example, non-molestation orders or occupation orders where domestic abuse is alleged); I do private law children which is dis­putes between parents, usually about where a child should live and how much contact they should have with the other parent; I do care proceed­ings, where the state’s involved to protect children; and I do financial remedies after separation.

NB: I wonder if you could give me some examples of the types of cases that you are instructed in right now?

MJ: In the next couple of months, I have a few final hearings coming up that are multi-day trials in public law proceedings. In some I’m acting for the local authority and in others I’m on the parents’ side. I have final hearings coming up in private law matters as well. A few are for long­standing clients that I have represented over many, many months so it will be good to see those coming to a conclusion. Directions hearings are a pretty common feature of my diary where the court is just decid­ing how to proceed, taking stock, deciding what evidence do we need to line up to get us to a final hearing, but substantive decisions aren’t necessarily made. I have a few fact-finding hearings coming up which is where serious allegations have been made, usually of domestic abuse or non-accidental injury to a child, and the court has to determine whether or not they are true before it can move on to make decisions about the children.

NB: I know a bit about fact-finding hearings because often they can give rise to parallel criminal proceedings.

MJ: Yes. There is an interesting interplay between the family and the criminal jurisdictions. We obviously use a different standard of proof in family law, on the balance of probabilities, which is a lower standard of proof because of course we are dealing with risk to children. Family practitioners seem to be far more risk-averse and far more cautious in how we approach our cases.

NB: Criminal cases tend to focus on the wrongdoing, don’t they, and the punishing of a particular incident, but in the Family Court you are looking to the on-going safety of people, and that makes it more press­ing, I think?

MJ: Yes. The Family Court isn’t about attributing blame or punishing anyone. The goal is different than in the Criminal Court. The reason we have fact-finding hearings in domestic abuse matters is to keep victims of abuse safe. The reason we have fact-finding hearings in children mat­ters is not to mud sling or to find out who is the bad guy, it’s with a view to reaching a decision which is safe and productive for the child and which has their best interests in mind and which can hopefully allow this family to move forward in a way that they can live with. There’s a lot of long-term thinking in family cases.

On the interplay of the two jurisdictions, in season 1, episode 3 of my podcast Professionally Embarrassing we cover the really interesting case of Re: H-N which is a landmark appeal concerning the approach taken by the Family Court to allegations of domestic abuse in private law children cases, and there’s a section in the judgment about how criminal law concepts should be used in the Family Court. As a family lawyer, I could name various examples of the Family Court importing the approach taken in the Criminal Court. For instance, family law judges routinely give themselves a Lucas direction, about the approach to be taken to lies; that is drawn from the criminal case of R v Lucas.

NB: Can we turn to the sort of tasks that you do in your job that might perhaps be recognisable to students at Bar School?

MJ: I’m in court a lot. In a typical week, I will be in court at least three or four times, sometimes five, and maybe more than five if I’m doing multiple hearings in a day. Being in court and being an advocate is a big part of my job. On a typical case I would receive the papers, read them, draft a position statement on the basis of the instructions that I have. The papers can come in very last minute; they can come in the night before or the morning of or a few hours before the hearing, and you just have to get to grips with it as best as you can.

NB: What’s a position statement?

MJ: A position statement is there to assist the court with what the issues are and what your client’s position is in respect of the issues. You might also cover any relevant law. There’s an expectation, par­ticularly in care matters, that there will be a position statement. I have certainly been told off for not having prepared a position statement even though on legal aid matters you aren’t paid for prep. I am in the habit of drafting a position statement even when it’s not strictly needed because I find it’s quite a useful way to marshal what the issues are and what my client’s view is on each of them. Then I usually speak to the client and the other side in the hour before the hearing is listed for pre-hearing discussions, see what the issues are and whether they can be narrowed.

At the moment, most of my hearings are taking place remotely, although the number of in-person hearings are starting to pick up again now. What happens in the hearing very much depends on what type of hearing it is; sometimes it can be five minutes, sometimes you go in thinking it will be five minutes and it lasts the whole day, and it may be necessary to call witnesses and to cross-examine them or it’s just a matter where you address the judge in submissions, and you don’t have to call any witnesses. If it’s a final hearing, after evidence is given, the court will require you to make either oral submissions or give written submissions summarising the issues in the case, your client’s position and the evidence. After the hearing, the order has to be drafted, agreed with the other parties and then I need to update my solicitor on what happened.

NB: You actually get involved in drafting the court’s order arising out of the hearing?

MJ: Yes. It’s expected that the representative for the applicant drafts the order and circulates it to everyone else for agreement and if the applicant is not represented, then it’s the other represented party who has to draft it and get it agreed between everyone, and then we send in an agreed order for the judge to approve. It can be a bit of a nightmare getting an order approved especially if you are against a litigant in person. With a solicitor or another barrister, you feel more comfort­able negotiating with them about the contents of an order, but with a litigant in person, you need to be more cautious because you don’t want to put undue pressure on them or be perceived to be pulling the wool over their eyes.

NB: You’re talking about reducing into writing the order that the judge gave orally during the hearing?

MJ: Yes. What generally happens in care matters is that the local author­ity advocate will prepare a draft order when they are sending in the case summary, and there will be discussions before the hearing when the advocates will talk about the draft order and talk about things that need to go in it, and things that don’t, and hopefully an agreed order can be sent to the court ahead of the hearing. It can be tweaked afterwards.

NB: What sorts of people or organisations have largely been your clients?

MJ: I’ve increasingly been doing a lot of work for the local authority, but when I’m not for a local authority, the bulk of my clients are dis­tressed individuals in the middle of a family dispute or clients at risk of having children removed from their care. I often represent some of the most vulnerable members of our society, people with learning difficul­ties, victims of domestic abuse. I have represented children. It’s a pretty mixed bag.

NB: Can I just ask you about your case load and what that’s been like compared with your second six?

MJ: I think I had a pretty relaxed second six. I remember being so frus­trated in my first week because I was hyped to get on my feet and I didn’t get a case until the Friday! At the time, I was very stressed and I thought of every case as being of Supreme Court level importance which of course, it wasn’t. Tenancy was a bit of a baptism of fire because I went from relatively straightforward matters in pupillage to lengthy final hearings, fact-finds, contested trials.

Anecdotally, the quality of my work improved massively when I left London (though, of course, I was a tenant in Birmingham as opposed to a pupil in London). I don’t know if that’s because there is so much more competition in London for that junior-level work. Now that I’ve left London, I find myself doing work at a level that I don’t think I would have come anywhere near had I stayed in London. Many of my peers in London don’t seem to be doing the sort of work I am.

NB: That’s interesting because sometimes people can think they’ve got to practise in London because that’s where all the good work is.

MJ: That’s very much what I thought. I had always envisaged my prac­tice being in London and being a high-flying London lawyer, but I had these health difficulties during my pupillage year, and I had a bit of a re-assessment and I found that I wasn’t very happy in London and I wanted to be closer to home. I am from Leicester, so I moved back to the Midlands. It was the best decision I made. My quality of life has improved; I will be able to buy a house shortly rather than flat sharing until I’m 45. I don’t have to take the tube for an hour to get from East London to West London; I can drive around. I am just so much happier in the region. I find it friendlier and I find it more collegiate, so it was definitely the right decision for me.

NB: Tell me a bit about the percentage of your time spent in court as compared with working at your desk?

MJ: Usually I’m in court at least four, sometimes five, days a week. This week I had some personal things to deal with. I was only in court on Monday, and I took the rest of the week off to prep some trials and do some written advice. It’s difficult to quantify. When I’m not in court, I am usually preparing for being in court.

NB: I know some people who try to stick rigidly to an 8.30am to 5.00pm work pattern, but other people prefer working in the evenings.

MJ: I am absolutely rubbish at organising to work only during the day. It probably would be far more conducive to having a healthy work-life balance, but I find that I work best ridiculously early or late in the day. That’s the beauty of being self-employed, I can manage my time that way. I think that I would have really struggled with a 9-to-5 not just because that’s not compatible with the way that I work but also because I suffer from anxiety and depression. I think being in one place from 9 to 5 and being dictated to about the times that I need to work would not be very helpful to me. I like working under pressure; I like working in my own time, I like managing my own time and I am capable of doing it. So as long as you’re self-motivated and you do what you’re supposed to when you’re supposed to do it, there’s a lot of freedom at the Bar in terms of how you work.

NB: I agree with that. At the time I decided to study law, the one thing I knew about myself was that I didn’t want to work at the same seat in the same desk in the same office, all day, every day, all the time. Being at the Bar is fabulous for that because it’s the opposite. You go all sorts of places; one court one day, another court another day.

MJ: Yes. I love it and I didn’t really appreciate how much freedom I would have once I was at the Bar. Self-employment is something that actually really frightened me. I had always imagined being employed, having a regular pay cheque, having a pension, not having to do my own taxes, but now that I’m here, the pay-off is enormous because if I finish a hearing early and I’ve done all my prep, I will go out for the rest of the day and do what I want, or I will go have a nap. The freedom is great. There is no office politics. I don’t have anyone telling me what to do and I don’t have a manager that I have to constantly answer to. I am entirely in control of my practice, it’s great!

NB: What about the sorts of courts that you attend?

MJ: I’ve been in court before magistrates right up to the High Court. I mostly see magistrates, district judges, circuit judges and part-time judges called recorders, and the bulk of my work is in the West Midlands. Occasionally, I have to go elsewhere, like London or Milton Keynes (the glamorous life I lead). I have been able to do work in courts that are fur­ther afield, like Manchester; because of remote hearings so I no longer have to travel to get there. It’s given me a lot more freedom to not be limited to my geographical area.

NB: The traditional wig and gown, would that be something that you would only wear in the High Court?

MJ: In specific circumstances in the High Court and then in the Court of Appeal, but otherwise it’s just business dress, all with a view to making things a bit more user-friendly in the Family Court and not intimidating.

NB: Especially given that the number of litigants in person is increas­ing, I expect?

MJ: Yes. In care proceedings, there is non-means tested, non-merits tested legal aid available for parents, which means that people tend not to represent themselves. I am against so many litigants in person in my private law matters, though, and it makes things more difficult. Obviously, the government was trying to make savings by cutting legal aid in those areas, but it’s all a false economy because litigants in per­son, and this is no criticism of them, don’t know what they are sup­posed to do, what the law is, they don’t focus on the issues. We spend more time in court explaining things to them. They don’t comply with directions, so there are delays. There are needless conflicts. An advocate will understand what is reasonable to fight over and what is something that you can just let go. It does make life difficult being against litigants in person, and obviously it must be a terrifying experience for them. I wouldn’t want to navigate the court without a legal representative.

Some of the cases in which I have acted pro bono, had I not been there, my client would have had to do it alone. It’s just a travesty because they are often very vulnerable, really distressed and they have to navi­gate law and procedure which is not straightforward. It’s an impossible task to do well when unrepresented, and it just causes so much needless anxiety to everyone involved. And also, there is a really tricky ethical line because the advocate for the represented party is expected to assist the court in the administration of justice by helping the litigant in per­son where we can i.e. speaking to them ahead of time, trying to help them identify the issues, trying to help them articulate their position so we can communicate it to the judge. Obviously we can’t advise them and it’s a very, very, tricky ethical line to tread because you need to be help­ful to them and to the court, but you also have to act fearlessly in your own client’s interest. So, it just makes life difficult for everyone.

NB: What sorts of your practice do you find the most interesting and also what areas do some people maybe find less interesting?

MJ: All the areas of law are really interesting because they engage very different parts of my brain. Care proceedings are a totally different world to financial remedies and indeed to private children law. I am interested in lots of areas, for example the movement of children across borders and relocation, forced marriage, the interaction of family law with parallel immigration proceedings. I have just released a book with my colleague in Chambers on Practice Direction 12J which is the frame­work that we use to manage allegations of domestic abuse in the Family Court. I like that every day raises a new issue or a novel point of law that I haven’t necessarily come across before. That’s what keeps it exciting.

NB: Has your time in practice matched or differed from expectations that you had when you were at Bar School?

MJ: I had done so much work experience and so many mini-pupillages in family sets, so I think I had a relatively realistic idea of the realities of the job, like how much we wait around in court just to have the case come on and things like that. The only thing I hadn’t really appreciated was the freedom of self-employment. In terms of whether Bar School prepared me for what came? Not really. I don’t really recall much of what I did in Bar School. Whole chunks of it like civil and criminal litigation I never used and were never relevant ever again. As for witness examination, again, that was mostly in the criminal and civil context rather than in the family context. So, I think the minute I set foot in a court and was on my feet, everything I learnt in Bar School just flew out of my head and it’s almost like you’re back to square one and you are re-learning it.

With family law, I did one module in family litigation which was helpful. Conference skills, I use that quite a lot in practice so that was helpful. Like I said, the advocacy, and I don’t know if this is necessar­ily a criticism of the Bar course, I just think that until you’re there, it’s difficult to really know what it’s like. I did the pupils’ advocacy course when I was doing pupillage and that was very, very rigorous. They used the Hampel method and would keep stopping you as you were speaking and correct you there and then rather than waiting until the end to give feedback and it’s a pretty brutal process, but it does kick the bad habits out of you and you’re getting feedback from these really eminent silks and judges, and I do think I learnt quite a lot from that.

NB: What are the most difficult changes in your practice that you have had to get used to?

MJ: I was only a tenant for four months before lockdown and then all of a sudden, my workload disappeared for about two or three months. It was pretty devastating financially but I’m very lucky because I live at home and I have financial support. I gave evidence about it to the Westminster Commission on the Sustainability of Legal Aid. I think between 23rd March and 8th June, I had about five legal aid cases; everything else was just adjourned en masse and I had practically nothing to do. When we are building up our reputation, junior practitioners obviously rely on senior barristers not being able to cover all the available work, but now if the solicitors’ favoured barrister of 20 years’ call is able to do hearings by video-link in Coventry in the morning and then in Wolverhampton in the afternoon, the solicitor will instruct the favoured barrister. There is no reason to instruct more junior counsel when the legal aid rate is going to be the same across the board. So, that was difficult, but my workload did come back to normal by the time the summer came round.

NB: How would you describe your work-life balance?

MJ: It’s something I feel very strongly about. I think there is a culture of praising over-work at the Bar, feeling like it’s a sign of competence or strength to never say no and to push yourself to the brink when you just burn out. Having this very serious mental health crisis in my pupillage year, which wasn’t related to over-work I should say but was grounded in a whole host of different reasons, put things into perspective for me, and now I won’t prioritise my work over my health. It’s just not worth it. So I take on as much as I am able, and I have responded to e-mails that ask me to cover urgent hearings if I am able to do so, but I have no qualms telling my very supportive clerks and practice managers, like I did this week, that I am at capacity or I need some time off or I need more prep days. I have never received a negative response when I say I need a breather.

The beauty of being self-employed, like I said, is being able to manage your own practice, and I don’t think enough barristers seem to recog­nise that or make the most of it. Barristers can feel as if they must do what their clerks tell them to do for fear of ending up on some blacklist and not receiving all the good work. That has not been my experience. A lot of the work-life balance issues are self-imposed. For instance, I took some holiday out in the summer, but I agreed to do a hearing during my holiday because my instructing solicitor wanted continuity of counsel. I had a week off planned, but I shifted it to a different week because there was a five-day trial that needed covering that I really wanted to do.

Part of the work-life balance issue is structural; it’s the workload, the crowded court lists, court closures, backlog of work, Covid, last-minute briefs; but part of it is individual and I think it’s a group of type A over­achievers who can’t say no and want to do their best for their clients and then end up driving themselves into the ground.

NB: When you’re not in court, do you work in Chambers or at home?

MJ: Home. I don’t live in the West Midlands, and it takes me at least an hour to drive to Chambers. I love working from home so remote working worked out quite well for me. I do miss being around people in Chambers and being able to pick people’s brains, but I always have a very long list of phone numbers of people that I need to call if I need help with something. I never feel detached from Chambers. At the very beginning of the pandemic they set up a system of wellbeing mentors so we each have someone in Chambers to talk to. I feel very supported in Chambers.

NB: What is your view of how the Bar deals with wellbeing?

MJ: It is great that we are talking more about wellbeing, but it’s starting to become a bit of a corporate buzz word. People are talking about yoga sessions and going for a walk at lunchtime and non-uniform Fridays and all these other measures to improve wellbeing when there are so many structural issues that are impacting wellbeing like, particularly in crime, legal aid rates and over-work and bullying and harassment, sexual harassment, racism. I just worry that wellbeing becomes a tick­box exercise for many Chambers when it should be a constant process of reviewing procedures and seeing whether you’re doing well enough and what can you do better. I’ve been co-organising a series for women in family law because I feel so strongly about it. It’s called ‘Welfare Wednesdays’ because I was so fed up of the term ‘wellbeing’. The aim is to address what we think are the real hard-hitting issues that are affect­ing our collective mental health. The first session was on overcoming rejection timed to coincide with pupillage offer day, and it’s all about developing resilience. We’ve also done sessions on navigating the barris­ter-clerk relationship and family law supervision. I think wellbeing is a very multi-faceted issue and I’m worried that it’s being watered down and the approach to it can be quite reductive.

NB: How techy is your practice area?

MJ: My Chambers has just gone paperless, though I was always pretty paperless anyway. My Mac is the only thing I ever really take around with me. I avoid having paper bundles. I live in perpetual fear of leaving a bundle on the train and having to report myself to the Information Commissioner’s Office, so I prefer being paperless. I was introduced to a PDF expert during the paperless working sessions that were being run by the Family Law Bar Association: game-changer! I now annotate and bookmark my electronic bundles beautifully. I have an app on my phone that scans, so I rarely need to go into Chambers or use my home scanner. I store my receipts electronically on an app so that I can send them to my accountant.

NB: When I first started out at the Bar back in 2000, big heavy trol­ley cases were the thing because you’d have folders and files and your Blackstone’s or your Archbold in heavy copy. It was back-breaking work!

MJ: I do have my Red Book in hardcopy which mostly I carry around for show, but I think the era of barristers trekking around the Royal Courts of Justice with suitcases is long gone or on its way out. I will say that technology has created this expectation of being constantly avail­able. I had my work e-mails on my phone, and it was causing me so much stress because it was the first thing I read when I wake up in the morning. I deleted my work account from my phone and I have to actu­ally log in to my e-mails and onto my laptop to access it, and I think that when we use technology this much, you do have to set those kinds of boundaries otherwise you are just constantly ‘on’.

NB: Before you started the job, did you have any expectations about travelling?

MJ: I knew that there was a lot of travel involved but I don’t think I really appreciated how much that would fatigue me. In practice, before I was driving, I’d have to get a train to Birmingham and then get another train to whichever court I was going to, so door-to-door, it would usu­ally take about two hours. Four hours round trip travel on top of a full day of court and then you get home and start working on your papers for the next day. It is exhausting to do that five days a week, so I was very happy with remote working. I enjoy going into court when I have to go into court. I like seeing the court staff who I know by name; I like seeing my friends and colleagues, I like the experience of going to court but to not have to do that every day has actually been a massive relief because I don’t live on circuit.

NB: Have you any experiences or observations about diversity at the Bar?

MJ: The Bar is not diverse. It’s not a meritocracy either. It’s a very old institution with very old, ingrained prejudices that is going to take a very long time to dislodge. I had a work experience student who said to me that she hadn’t seen many other people who looked like me on the profiles of Chambers’ websites - that had been my experience as well. I have been very fortunate in that the Chambers where I did pupillage and the Chambers that I’m currently at are, relatively speaking, quite diverse but that’s not true of the rest of the Bar. I don’t see a lot of people who look like me at the Bar. I say to people that my face shouldn’t be an encouraging statistic for diversity at the Bar because yes, I’m brown, but I am also privately educated, middle class, very privileged, went to an elite university; I was not the first person in my family to go to university either, so for all these reasons I was boosted up to the Bar by a system that was built to advantage me. So, I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and I would encourage people to look critically at any statistics that seem to suggest that the Bar is more diverse than it is because there is more lurking underneath. I boost the BME statistics but that’s not necessarily reflective of what’s going on under the surface.

NB: Can you give me an idea of the sort of income progression that’s typical in the early years of practice in family law?

MJ: I think between pupillage and my first year of tenancy, it took a little bit of time to get an income stream going and I don’t think enough people appreciate that. My pupillage award was relatively generous but I was living in London so I would blow through it quite easily. As you start doing work, there is a lag in the fees coming through to you, so you have to hope that you have very efficient fees clerks who are chasing after your money to ensure that you’re getting paid. Even so, it takes a while for legal aid to filter through. I did a case in January last year and I was paid over a year later. I remember chasing my clerks and going ‘what case is this about’ because I had completely forgotten about it.

My fees have increased quite significantly, comparing my first year’s accounts against my second year. I have a solid income which will likely continue to rise with seniority. I think it’s good to have a diverse practice of both legal aid and private work if you can get it because a lot of the work that I do on my legal aid cases isn’t remunerated, whereas my fees for my privately paid work are negotiated by my clerks with the view to agreeing a fee which is considered appropriate for the work that I’m doing and the level of seniority that I’m at.

NB: Any thoughts about the future of the family bar?

MJ: You are never going to run out of interesting work. I also don’t think that family legal aid is as low as criminal legal aid so I think that if you are worried about surviving at the family bar, the same concerns that you might have about the criminal bar are not so acute at the fam­ily bar, particularly if you diversify like I said by doing private work as well. I’m hoping that the remote working that we embraced during Covid is here to stay for directions hearings and things like that because it’s really not necessary to go into court to travel hours for a five-minute mention. I hope that we can be a bit more efficient because there is a huge court backlog as well, and we will hopefully be able to cut through it more, but I do think that face-to-face hearings are often important. I think that family law is a people-based job; you need to look people in the eye and give them advice they don’t necessarily want to hear, and you have to show compassion and empathy and that can’t be replicated by a bot or by a virtual service. So, I think that there is a role for tech­nology, but it needs to be very carefully managed alongside what makes the family bar human.

There is also a narrowing of the line between barristers and solici­tors. I am public access qualified so I can be instructed directly by mem­bers of the public and I’m often against solicitors and legal executives who are doing their own advocacy. The strict distinction between the Bar and solicitors, particularly in family law, is becoming very thin.

But I do worry that family lawyers are at breaking point. I worry that particularly in care proceedings there is so much work to be done and so little time. Everyone is at capacity. There are huge existing delays in the system because of things like court closures which were exacerbated by Covid, and there is going to be a wellbeing crisis in the very near future I suspect, and what I worry about is that there is going to be a brain drain and a total re-directing of talent from this area of practice.

NB: Do you mean as barristers turn to other areas of law instead or turn to other jobs even?

MJ: Both. I think particularly in legal aid work. I think some barris­ters will just think this isn’t worth it. There are other areas of law that are more lucrative. I also think that the legal profession as a whole is exhausted. We come into the profession with skills that are appealing in other professions so it gives us a lot of options. There needs to be more investment in keeping people in the profession because we can just take our skills elsewhere. Not me, anytime soon. I’m happy where I am but I don’t have caring responsibilities; I don’t have any dependents. I can afford to not have a life; I can manage the unpredictable lifestyle. The only person that I’m irritating is my boyfriend. I honestly don’t know how I could manage it if I did have kids. I am in awe of people who have kids or caring responsibilities because I don’t know how they manage their time with such an unpredictable diary as well.

2