No hurdle is impossible to surpass. I didn’t know any lawyers, growing up. My entire family was military and despite stellar military officers in our lineage, my sister and I were the first generation to go to university. I came to the profession late, having navigated receptionist jobs, paralegal roles, considered and rejected ILEX and then read my LLB at a time when the economy was imminently set to collapse and criminal legal aid pupillages were about to evaporate. I crowbarred my way in via qualifying first as a solicitor, with a lot of help from mentors and contacts I made along the way. Once into the profession I knew what interested me; serious and organised crime, regulatory, inquests/inquiries and military law. I approached my career on the basis of ‘don’t ask, don’t get’.

Keep your circle of solicitors tight, rather than working for lots of different firms. Stick with a handful and regularly check in with them so they know what you are aiming for. Communicate with them and tell them what you want. When I was a solicitor, I remember vividly the moment a senior female barrister called me and said ‘Stop sending me sex. I hate it. Send me violence, knives, guns, murder.’ So I did. I stopped sending her sex cases and I made her the priority for the work she wanted. Had she not explained that to me, she would have continued receiving rape and serious sexual offences instructions, because I considered her to be the best at them. It really was as simple as that. At the Bar myself later, I emulated her and it has borne fruit – my practice is now at a larger set and my briefs are in military law, regulatory and serious and organised crime with inquest and inquiry work, exactly what I wanted.

Social media can be a tool for success but mishandled, it can end your career. I crafted a very successful anonymous Twitter profile in 2009 when it was a new phenomenon and built up a network of friends from ‘Legal Twitter’ across the profession. As the years went by it was a source of immense pride to see that network of friends take silk, start their own law firms, be appointed to the bench, become Circuit Leaders and go on to achieve professional success. Social media was vital in coordinating responses to the various threats to justice and galvanised the profession during the pandemic. Its usage is not without risk, over-familiarity with it breeds contempt and deploying a poor version of yourself online can deter people from instructing you. Being reckless, intoxicated or malicious and you face regulatory prosecution at worst and very embarrassing ‘quiet words’ from your head of chambers or supervisor, if in pupillage, at best. My advice is to be interesting, unique and entirely yourself. Self-advertising, self-aggrandising conceit will turn people away from wanting to work with you, whereas being self-deprecating and humorous attracts people to your orbit. There is always a way to enhance your social media image productively – even anonymously. Remember that social media is about people, and the qualities that make people want to be around you in real life are the same qualities you should enhance online.

Think like a man and aim higher, earlier. I was always told that men apply for positions and appointments before they are ready and that women wait, to our detriment. I listened carefully to this advice; if I have fulfilled the criteria on paper for a role that I have aspired to, I have applied even if I thought others more capable, or that I was not ready. Most application processes are so long that by the time you succeed and attain a position, whether it is judicial or a panel elevation, you are likely to be more than ready. You were ready all along; you were just underestimating yourself. The other piece of advice I carry closely is to think about competencies and requirements when you are in the midst of the more complex cases and to make a note of the skills you are using as you go along. When the time comes, you’ll be more quickly able to refresh your memory and report on the competencies you demonstrated.

Cheer your friends on and mentor others. Your success is a hundredfold more dazzling when it is reflected on the faces of your closest friends, and theirs in yours. True friends will agonise over pathways towards goals and celebrate successes together. Don’t be competitive early in your career; a friend getting a particular type of brief before you do is no fuel for envy but a cause for celebration. Extend the hand to others that was extended to you. The profession will only survive if those who follow in our footsteps benefit from enthusiastic guidance.

The higher you rise, the larger the knives. Not everyone will be with you, and there will be people who actively seek to challenge or undermine you to achieve their own aims. Stand your ground, be kind without being weak, be true to yourself and above all maintain your integrity. Lean on your friends; it transpires that when the chips are down, that network you carefully built will stand in front of you and alongside you.

Pay it forward… perhaps in not as extreme a fashion as I did. I can’t entirely recommend starting a crisis response evacuation and resettlement charity from scratch during a pandemic while on maternity leave, but maternity leave does odd things to the brain. I have hated and loved it in equal waves of ferocity; the most rewarding part of it has been seeing the families thriving in their new destination countries and watching our wonderful volunteers successfully secure pupillages (100% track record, I’m keeping tabs on you all like a proud mother!). You may think you don’t have transferable skills, but being a barrister endows you with a broad skillset that enables you to persuade and negotiate with members of the Houses of Lords and Commons, prepare bids, conduct meetings with foreign heads of state, NGO CEOs, senior domestic government heads of department and ministers, organise large groups of diverse people, project manage, draft policy... the list is endless. Being a criminal barrister requires you to be able to process vast amounts of information, distil it and act quickly under stress – exactly what you need when reacting to an international crisis. I was raised with the ethos that if you have something that can benefit those less fortunate, you should donate it. You won’t regret doing so.