I’m a professional regulatory barrister, meaning I advise professionals who are subject to investigations by their regulator. For me, that largely means healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, paramedics, psychologists – but beyond that, it also includes other regulated professionals, such as accountants, chartered surveyors, and others working in professions where regulatory proceedings can have a profound impact on both career and reputation.
My route into the profession was not especially traditional. Before coming to the Bar, I spent the larger part of my earlier career working in healthcare. For the final eight years of that, I worked as a registered healthcare professional, as a nurse, and I had what many would probably consider to be a successful and rewarding career in that field. I became a ward manager within three years of qualifying, and I genuinely enjoyed the work.
Healthcare is a very challenging environment to work in, but it is also hugely rewarding. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in helping patients progress, in building professional relationships with the people you work with day in and day out, and in feeling that your work is making a meaningful difference.
Looking back, it’s probably fair to say that my background in healthcare instigated a slow engagement with the law. Working in healthcare – and particularly in management – meant being exposed to questions around consent, detention, treatment, and all sorts of ethical issues and dilemmas on a regular basis. Those questions were part of daily working life, and I think that gradual exposure is what first drew me toward legal thinking and, eventually, toward the profession itself.
People often say that moving from healthcare into law seems like quite a leap, and in many respects it is. The professions are very, very different. But I do think there is a common thread that runs between the two: in both, there’s a desire to assist, to facilitate, to advise, and ultimately to help someone into a better situation. They’re not the same by any means and there are considerable differences between the two, but there is a degree of commonality there.
I was called to the Bar in 2006, and I began my pupillage in 2008. I certainly didn’t find getting pupillage easy. I don’t think many people do. It was a highly competitive process then, and it remains a highly competitive process now. I remember that when I was at Bar school, only a very small number of people on my course had secured pupillage by the end of it. I don’t know how representative that was overall, but it certainly reflected how difficult it could be to get through.
At the time, it felt like a very long road. I was applying for pupillage while working, and I spent weekends preparing applications, preparing for interviews, and trying to make progress wherever I could. I was very focused on getting there, and I don’t think I ever really lost sight of that.
Like most people applying, there were setbacks. There were interviews, second interviews, and rejections, and it’s difficult not to take those as a knockback when you’re in the middle of the process. But looking back now, in the context of an entire working life, it was actually a relatively short period of time. It just doesn’t feel that way when you’re living through it!
My pupillage itself was not especially conventional either. I completed it with a regulator, where I was involved in prosecuting, largely within a professional regulatory framework involving healthcare professionals. During that period, I also spent time in the CPS and in another set of chambers, so I had a broader spread of experience alongside the specialist regulatory work. In many ways, I was fortunate. I ended up doing pupillage in an area of law that I was genuinely interested in, and that I’ve continued to practise in ever since.
After pupillage, my entire career at the Bar prior to joining The Barrister Group was in employed practice. I initially worked as a hearings lawyer, then as a senior hearings lawyer, and later for a period as Head of Investigations at a national regulator. After that, I moved into a role as an in-house barrister at Blake Morgan, a Legal 500 Tier 1 firm, and I stayed there for around seven years, progressing to the position of Senior Associate before eventually making the move to the self-employed Bar.
That transition has been absolutely wonderful.
It is a scary prospect, moving from employed practice to self-employed practice, and I think that probably played some part in why I didn’t make the leap sooner. But for me personally, it has been transformative. It has enabled me to meet the demands of both life and work in a way that employed practice simply did not.
People often talk about work-life balance, but I think for me it’s more accurate to talk about fluidity.
What self-employed practice has given me is a much more fluid concept of the working day. It might mean getting up early, starting late, finishing late, or letting the day expand to accommodate what’s needed. If I have a hearing, it will very often be a long day. But if I am doing advisory work or holding conferences with clients, it might mean starting earlier, taking a break in the middle of the day, and then picking things back up again later.
That flexibility has made an enormous difference.
I have four children, and self-employed practice has meant I can fit everything in. That, to me, is the beauty of it. It is not necessarily about working less – if anything, I’m probably working harder now than I ever have done – but I’m also seeing more of my children. That’s because I have much greater control over how my time is structured.
It’s not really about reducing the day, so much as reorganising it. That’s been especially important for me as a parent. Family life has real demands, and the ability to structure my work around those demands – while still building an ambitious practice – has been one of the greatest benefits of transitioning to the self-employed Bar.
That same fluidity also works particularly well for my client base: a large proportion of my clients are healthcare professionals, and many of them work unconventional shifts – night shifts, day shifts, late shifts, long days – alongside significant family commitments of their own. So being able to offer conferences outside of traditional working hours, whether that means later in the evening or earlier in the morning, makes a real difference. It allows legal support to fit around the reality of their lives, rather than expecting them to fit themselves around standard working hours.
In that sense, flexible working is not just something that benefits me — it also opens up access to legal services in a way that feels more practical, more realistic, and more responsive to the needs of the people I represent.
When I first entered the profession, I think I probably carried an assumption that the Bar might not be especially receptive to someone with my background. I didn’t come through the most traditional route: I had a Master’s degree in Mental Health Studies, rather than a law degree in the first instance, and I had a previous career as a nurse and ward manager. At the time, I think I wondered whether that would be seen as unusual in a way that might count against me. But I think that was probably more my perception than the reality.
Over time, I’ve come to realise that the Bar is much more open to people with different backgrounds and previous careers than I first assumed. In fact, I think people who come to the profession with different careers and different experiences have something genuinely valuable to bring, and from what I have seen are highly valued.
Those differences in background and skillset can set you apart, and in a competitive profession, standing out is no bad thing. If anything, I think the Bar has probably always had room for people who have something different to offer.
The Barrister Group was my first and only choice of chambers when I decided to leave employed practice; I had read a lot about it, and what drew me in the most was the level of ambition behind it. The aim of simplifying access to legal services was a large part of what appealed to me, but so too was the sense that it was a set that genuinely supported ambition in its members.
It felt non-conventional in a way that I liked. Perhaps it appealed to me because I had come to the Bar via a non-conventional route myself. Whatever the reason, I liked what I heard, and I was very keen to become a member. In many ways, what once seemed unconventional about TBG now feels much less so – but I think that’s because it was ahead of the curve. It was doing things differently before many others were prepared to, and other sets have since moved in a similar direction.
What also appealed to me was the absence of politics. There was a clear sense of experienced clerking support, but without the kind of internal politics that can so often weigh heavily in traditional chambers structures. That was refreshing, and it mattered.
Looking back now, joining The Barrister Group was one of the best decisions I have made. I’ve found it to be a very supportive environment. It’s a place that supports ambition, and that’s something I noticed right from the outset and which I’ve absolutely experienced in practice since joining. It’s given me the space to build my practice in the way I wanted to, while still making it work alongside the wider demands of life and family.
And, on a more personal level, I have simply found it to be full of good people. I can honestly say that every single person I have dealt with through chambers has been lovely. There’s often a joke that you have to be a nice person to work at The Barrister Group, but I think there is probably some truth in that: it’s a supportive, friendly, and refreshingly unpolitical place to work, and for me, it really has been a very good decision.