 In my capacity as chair of the Faculty of Law, I'm delighted to welcome you to what will be a fascinating and intellectually stimulating afternoon. We have an excellent program today, but I'll explain that the event is simultaneously backward looking and forward oriented. The look backwards arises from the centenary that prompted the faculty to organize this event. As most of you are aware, 2019 is the centenary of the enactment of the sex disqualification removal act, 1919, when women were finally allowed to practice law. This we thought was an occasion worth marking with an event oriented around Cambridge women in law. Many of you are also likely aware that the centenary today we're marking has received considerable attention. At the forefront in this regard is the first 100 years project, a groundbreaking history project that the law society, the bar council, and the Chartered Institute for Legal Executives has supported. You likely already have seen the first 100 years banners that are on display as you enter the law faculty building. If not, then please take a look at one of the two breaks this afternoon or with the reception. At the same time, please keep an eye out for the display of equal to everything, Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court, which is a children's book authored by a Fuehrerche and published by the Legal Action Group. Esa Pilger, Publishing Director for LAG, is here to answer your questions and has copies of the book available for purchase. Spark 21, a charity set up to inform and inspire future generations of women in the legal profession, has been the primary institutional driver of the first 100 years project. Dana Dennis-Smith is the project's creator and we are delighted she is with us today to provide more background. I'll ask Dana to step forward to speak to us in just a moment. But what I want to say first is that today's event is also firmly tied to the future. I'll pick up at this point now and return to it in my concluding comments when the event draws to a close. Briefly, today's event is not a standalone occasion. The event marks the launch of Cambridge Women in Law, which will provide the focal point for interchange between those interested in women's involvement in the study and practice of law from a particularly Cambridge perspective. Though I'll return to, as I said, I'll return to this theme. But one thing I want to do is if you are interested in embarking on what this should be a very exciting journey, please do sign up. You can do so electronically through the website, which is here. Or also, I believe, we're also doing it old school and you can actually physically sign up this afternoon. With that, I'd like to turn things over to Dana Dennis-Smith and then I'll just speak for a couple of minutes before we start just to give you a quick roadmap of how this afternoon is going to go. Thank you. Good to see you, everybody. I'm Dana Dennis-Smith. I founded the first 100 years project five years ago. In fact, the idea came to me about six years ago. I've been coming across a photograph with just one woman in the middle of about 60 partners in one of the city law firms. I felt that we couldn't really shape the future of the profession. I'm a lawyer myself without really understanding where we came from. To my surprise, many people I met did not know that the centenary was coming up and they weren't really not preparing for it. So I set on this path of unearthing the story of women long forgotten, many actually graduates of this very university, and also collecting the stories of our generational pioneers. A couple of them you will see today at the closing session. So I'm really, really delighted that we were able to deliver the biggest campaign in relation to women in law that has been publicly privately funded, I should say. And it's been run exclusively by volunteers. So what have we achieved apart from the exhibition which has been touring the country and it's had over a million visits in 12 months. We also have a book coming out later next month. But also one of the proudest moments probably will come when we will unveil the first art work that will depict a woman in law in the Supreme Court. Why are we doing this? Really, very simple. I think this campaign has been our generation's gift to the future generations including my child who is 80 years old. I want her to consider the future in law and the future of going as far as she wants. But I think it's really important to leave a legacy and I think an organization like this and this kind of institution is probably the best place to know what the legacy is and what a difference it makes. For me, I think it's really important that women coming into the legal profession understand they belong to a whole history of legal contributions and that we are able to really pass that on to the next generation. So they feel they are part of a tradition, a tradition of women in law, but to the rule of law overall and really celebrate them but also make sure that the future is shaped along this contribution as well and they are not forgotten in the future. So the whole archive that we put together over the last five years which has 76 biographies that are original documentaries of the lives of pioneers in our day. It's all being donated to the London School of Economics Women's Library for future generations to have the research at hand around these pioneering women that we have today. Apart from the book and the artworks, we want to create a legacy that is visual, it's accessible and really puts women at the center of the legal profession because that is really the quietest revolution that we have seen in the last hundred years. It's the arrival of women and really the dominance of them as we enter the next hundred years. I think it needs to be celebrated but also it will shape us to drive the right agenda in the future. So please do follow our project because there's so much still to come. So many more films to be put out and premiered in the next coming months and obviously keep an eye out for our, if you like, we call it, Give Her the Future campaign around the artwork. Nothing has been done like this before and I think you will really be proud of what we have achieved. Thank you very much and have a good day. Thank you Dana, that was a fascinating overview of a great project and we're delighted with the catalyst for today's event. As I indicated what I want to do, I'm going to bring things back to the present now, having been looked at in the past and what we have as I've indicated is an absolutely first rate program and I'm going to provide a brief overview. Our first session is entitled Women in Practice. Our speakers here are each Cambridge law graduates who have flourished in different practice realms. Barristers and solicitors are both well represented and my colleague Pippa Rodgerson will moderate this discussion. Our second session focuses on women in the wider world. Again, our speakers are each Cambridge law graduates. A number began their careers in practice. Each, however, has struck out in a different direction now. Those different directions vary far and wide extending from the NGO sector to criminal prosecutions to the investment banking world, the media and politics. Captain Barnard will introduce this panel and Nikki Padfield will act as the moderator. Our third session features two of the Cambridge law graduates currently serving on the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale and Lady Arden. The title of this session is In Discussion. We're well aware when extending our invitations to both Baroness Hale and Lady Arden, they have plenty on their plates as evidenced by early this week. So what we decided to do rather than ask them to engage in a set piece lecture and get that sort of preparation, what we did is we thought that what we would do is have them discuss their respective careers in campus in general terms, challenges women in the law have faced currently faced and are likely to face in the future. Sarah Worthington will formally introduce our speakers and Alex Faran will moderate what will no doubt be a fascinating session. We have plenty of ground to cover. Let's begin. So, Pepper Rodgersen, please come up and introduce and work with our first man. Well, thank you and welcome everybody. It's wonderful to see you all here for this really interesting afternoon. Now, I need my panel, please come and sit. As we will see, we have six absolutely remarkable and interesting women. And I am going to have to be a ringmaster. I think I'm going to have to do my best to be properly assertive. Or as we know, other people might describe it either bossy or formidable. But I think assertive is about right. So, coming from your left to right, my right, we start with Keelan Gallagher, who is a silk at Batter Street. She's worked tirelessly in women's rights, for example, against the effects of austerity and welfare cuts. Next to her is Shona Gillett, who is also a barrister in England and Ireland. We've got a bit of an Irish connection down here. And it's now a part-time Judge and Tribunal member. Then we have Jessica Gladstone, who's a partner at my old firm, Kefa Chance, and she does international commercial and investment arbitration, and is also a former legal advisor to the STO, so has worked in the other direction from outward in, maybe. Next to her is Priolele, who is from Herbert Smith Freehills and has an absolutely fascinating role, and I think one we're going to want to hear more of, in legal operations, in the disruption really to the practice of law and how women might participate in that. She co-founded She Breaks the Law, which is an interesting name, I think, for a global network of women leaders of legal innovation. Then we have Sarah Luder, who is a partner in Slaughter and May, a head of the tax practice, I believe, and has survived composite visions with me, so definitely. Amongst many other things, she's set up the Slaughter and May's female leadership development network. We have Elaine Penrose of Hogan Lovell, she's a partner in the finance services and regulatory disputes team, but very involved, I know her more as a football player and a very keen follower of football and has done some charity work with the British Paralympic Association. And last, but certainly not least, is Amanda Pinto, who is a Silk at 33 Chance for Elaine Chambers and vice-chair of the Bar Council. She's been a champion of the first 100 years project, so we've got Cambridge in common, we've got Law in common, we're women, and there are lots of other connections. As I'm sure you're finding in the room, I had wonderful conversations with people who knew each other from before. So, I have got an hour with these wonderful, wonderful women. And I will try and allow enough time for questions and enough time for everybody to participate, but I am well aware that I have to keep tight range. So, apologies if sometimes I have to cut the vlog. Next question I thought might be interesting is a certain sort of backward-looking question, but it may be a context-setting question for where we are. And what I wanted to ask, really, is reflecting on a career, either at the bar or as a solicitor, how is the legal profession different, the practice of law different for women today than when we started? If I look back to my time, for the child's and my time starting as an academic, some things have really changed, maternity rights for the marital, paternity leave, flexible working, those are really, really very different to when I started and we were somehow expected to bury any hindrance like having children, but that's maybe just my perspective. So, I wonder if I can start with Amanda, who has been a barrister, I think, straight through. That's right. Very unadventurous. Although I did nearly leave, actually, at one point because I didn't think my career was progressing in the way I wanted it to, but I didn't leave and I'm very happy I didn't. So, how do you think the profession is different today? Well, I think there's two things and one of them is actually not really to do with gender. One is tech. I think tech's really changed a lot of things the way people work and access to materials, all those sorts of things. I think ways of working have changed and so that's meant different ways of being able to do law. And secondly, I think, generally speaking as well, the profession is much more open to different sorts of people. As far as women are concerned, it is just a completely different environment at the bar. When I joined, I was the first woman in my chambers. I was asked repeatedly in pupillage interviews whether I was going to have a family and was I going to leave. You definitely wouldn't be able to say that now. Now, there are about 50% of pupils of women and that's not to say that our career progression is smooth and sustained, I'm afraid. We do have a problem in the bar with retention of women, but there is at least a cohort coming in at the bottom. So, that's one good thing. Secondly, I think we've got many more examples of fantastic women to look up to and to see that you can get to the top of your profession or to positions of seniority that simply weren't there when I started. And thirdly, as you say, there are just systems and policies in place. It is in fact the case that we do have a problem with retention of women. Sorry. Thirdly, I think there are systems which are being enforced that simply were either not there or were not enforced, such as you say, as maternity benefit and well-being, which absolutely was just not part of the equation at all. In fact, I think when I joined, the real well-being issue was whether there was a woman's loo. Not to knock the facilities being available to all of us. When I was first at, as it was, Coward Chance, I think the laboratories were marked men, women and partners. But they did actually have a woman partner well before many other women. But she just didn't count the apartment's loo. Sarah, you've been alone at school for a may. Yes, we also actually... When I was first made a partner, the loo outside the partner's dining room was the men's loo, and the women had to go to a different floor to go to the loo. So it's no longer the case. I think the biggest change for me is that fact there are just more women around. And I think that that means people, women feel more as if they belong. When I was made a partner, I think there was an element of playing... playing at being a man, actually. You know, we still have sort of made, still has a partner's dining room. We have lunch together every day. And when I first used to go to lunch, she used to talk about football and cars, really. And I sit there now and, you know, I get young female partners talk about, you know, some problem they had dropping their kids off at school that morning or something I've had on with them. But just they bring themselves to work. And I think that that's something that I'm not proud of. I don't think we did, in my generation, bring ourselves to work. We played at being like a man. And I think another change is that the clients, there's more clients now, women. So many women leave private practice. But the reason they leave private practice is they go in-house. And therefore our clients are women. And therefore, although you have to try and persuade my male partners of this, actually clients don't necessarily want to spend all day Saturday at the cricket anymore. But that's good news for us too, because we don't have to spend all day at the cricket. So a lot of the focus on how you interact with your clients has changed and become more feminine. And I think that has made it an easier place to be a lawyer because obviously a big part of private practice is the business development side of it. And it's just a more healthy environment if your BD is in a mixed environment too. Does anybody else on the panel have something they'd like to say? Sure. So I entirely agree with what's been said about how much better it is than before. But I suppose my short answer to how is a career in the legal profession different than when you started for women is not as different as it should be. And if you take the bar, for example, we've had three decades since the early 1990s of equal entry level for women. So you now have 50% of pupil barristers being women. But then as you go further and further up in the higher echelons, disappointingly low and stubbornly low. And the same is true, obviously, in the solicitors' profession you've got 60% of entrants being women since 1990. But then when you go to partner level, it's only 27% when you go to magic circle firms, it's even lower. And I did have a staff which I thought might be interesting. I see many of you in the room and indeed on this panel who are women QCs. And you will know how few of us there are despite the headlines about increased diversity. I'm sure you've got this letter as well. When I took silk, I got a letter from a lady called Eleanor Platt QC at One Garden Court. And every year she writes to every single woman who takes silk, and it starts, Dear Female QC, and then it attaches to her email, to her letter, a list of all female silks ever. And when I took silk in 2017, I was number 397. And that included all women, alive or dead, who had ever been silk. And that's quite a shocking and sobering piece of reading I think. I mean, my colleague Helena Kennedy, silk in 1991, was only number 44 ever. So I got this, saw I was number 397 at the end of the list in 2017 because of my age. And it was completely dwarfed by the number of male silks in practice at that time, which was about 1,600. So I think things have changed, but my core point would be not changed enough. And if we haven't managed to move the dial in relation to women, despite three decades of equality at entry level, I've got real concerns about how we move the dial on other issues like social mobility, race, and diversity in other fields. Now I think that's a really important point. And in fact, my generation of entry to the law society, when I got whatever it is, admitted to the role of the sisters, in 1984, we were the first generation of 50-50. So it's a little ahead of the bar, actually. And boy, has that seemed to have stopped. Indeed, it's even the numbers have even gone backwards. So the leaky pipeline is, I think, an issue that you're very right to highlight. And I utterly agree with you that unless we've got enough diversity in the room, other sorts of diversities don't get any sort of looking. Did anybody else have anything that you'd like to add? Yeah. I was just going to say that one of the things that I hope will help move the dial significantly now, even though progress has been slow, might be the changes in policy over shared parental leave, by making it so visibly a joint sort of gender-free issue to be a child carer and to make that an equal burden, in a sense, and the opportunity for it to be an equal burden, because it is an opportunity as well. I think that could do more for the future of equality than a lot of other policies and changes that might have had less impact. I mean, already, we've not had it in place for a long time, but already the take-up has been phenomenal. And much more than some of the senior male partners had anticipated, because it was so far from something that would have been on their agenda in past years to interrupt your career like that. If actually people are jointly interrupting their career, it becomes less of a female issue and then a permanent female issue to be the primary one with primary responsibility to juggle that work-family balance. The only thing I might add to the career question is slightly different perspective and on a more positive note. And I think, personally, it's a very exciting time to be part of our legal profession at the moment, and not just for men, sorry, women, but for men as well in the sense of the legal profession being disrupted and there's the pace of change, particularly in the last couple of decades has been so much and it's only going to grow exponentially. And frankly, even when I started the profession a couple of decades ago now, some of the career options or the sort of alternative routes into the profession simply didn't exist, whether it be due to advancement of technology or the sort of new and different ways of working. You could, as a young legal professional in the legal profession, you could be a legal technologist, you could be a legal engineer, you could be a process designer, a data scientist, a project manager, all of these new career options that simply didn't exist and that's possibly true for both genders. And I know we said we wouldn't all answer the first question. We're doing well. First, just to echo the point about parental leave but also talk about paternity leave. Ironically, it's campaigning for men's rights to care for children that empower women, watching friends where the man would have taken more time off but can't because he's banned from doing so by his contract and watching your friend take more time off that she didn't want to turn. It's about us being allies for men in that way as well. So if you're in an organization, you don't know what the paternity leave is for the men in an organization, then look at that and campaign because often the men don't want to ask for that as well but their own gender biases about being seen as weaker if they actually want to do more childcare. If I could just add one thing, just looking backwards because this is a wonderful conversation that we're having when you think that when I joined the bar, there was no such thing as a maternity policy at all, let alone a paternity policy, let alone parental leave. It just didn't exist and in fact, the people in my chambers who had asked whether or not I would have a family and I said well I don't know but I might, what they also definitely thought was that not only would I not come back to work after having a baby, they thought I should not come back to work after having a baby. So really to be having this discussion I think shows that things have moved on, even though of course I agree that there's a long way to go. Yes, I just have my two points as well. There was a very interesting piece of research done by Murray Edwards recently about the importance of making allies with men and with other groups who are trying to find this sort of balance in the responsibilities and that we don't necessarily just focus on children as a problem, there are wider caring responsibilities and indeed other things that some of us might want to do than work which can be also captured in part of this discussion. I think that the flexible working piece is really relevant here because what we've seen at my family levels is that the men are taking up the opportunity to take flexible working options and not just because they have children. I have an associate in my team that doesn't have kids and wants to work and does work four days a week because his wife is a doctor, works difficult hours and lives out in Margay and so I think it's a brilliant sort of role model for future lawyers and men coming through that flexible working isn't a women issue and it isn't a problem issue it's just something that work has to accommodate. So I think, is there anybody in the audience who'd like to add anything? Yes, Joe. There was a promise of approval upon a touch around rational decisions for the women to take the means because it would be far too expensive for the couples of the men to do so. We need to keep our arms that way Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Should we move on? I think these discussions are going to sort of, we have a few cross currents because I know I want to get down to some sort of specifics and maybe some positive things which is I think we've all come across bumps in the road in our careers of various sorts. They may be internal or external they're all sorts of bumps in the road and I just thought I might ask my panel, you know, have they had a major hurdle that they've met in progression through the career that's sort of halted their progression or affected their progression and how did you overcome it? So I wondered if I could start with Elaine really whether, has your career been smooth? Some people do have smooth careers, I believe. Not me. My career is that my husband died 12 years ago and I have five children but that's one of those things that happens. Life tends to throw shit at you from time. So Elaine, have you been lucky or...? Well, in many ways I have. I'm certainly less interesting than all my panellists in the sense that I've been at my firm for my entire career. I joined the trainee in 2000 and I'm a partner 19 years on. So in that sense it's been very smooth, it would seem so at least. The one bump that sort of I think affected me throughout my career probably until after I became partner was this, I think what you said, Sarah, about having to play like a man. I would get feedback as a junior associate, a five foot two junior associate who looked young for my age at the time anyway. That I needed to display more gravitas. That I needed to police my enthusiasm. And I always found that incredibly irritating because I had my fellow trainees and junior associates, male ones who were six foot tall, deep voiced and if they looked a bit young they might grow a beard and they were done. They had gravitas. And I think the whole idea of gravitas is a male construct of what it means to have gravitas. And it really annoyed me because I felt what I needed to do to develop gravitas was to blur my voice, wear heels. Obviously I couldn't do much else than wear heels. I couldn't stretch myself. And I just hope that doing a good job and delivering good service to clients would do the trick. Since making partner, I wouldn't say I've rebelled against that. But I think it's so important that you can be yourself and that actually having a diverse range of approaches in delivering advice is actually a good thing. And so now I absolutely refuse to comply with that idea of policing my enthusiasm. I think it's a good thing to be enthusiastic. I rock up at work and my micro scooter, people look at me sideways. You like my wheels and we just move on. And I like the fact that junior associates coming through can look at the partners and say actually you can be yourselves and you don't have to be a certain way in order to be able to succeed. So I guess I sort of overcame it in the wrong way and hopefully now... But I think that's so interesting, is it? We've all had this and I think Sarah put it so well. Are you turning up as yourself at work or are you having to mask yourself? And that is something, an issue that is much wider than just women actually. It's a point about anybody who doesn't come from the in-crowd have we described the in-crowd. It can be the working class guy from Bolton frankly, as well as it can be somebody who wears something different, wants to pray at a different time, wants to go to bed with somebody different or whatever they happen to be. And that sense that we have to conform to is really... It is a sort of straight draft, isn't it? Absolutely. And it's good to hear that. But maybe you have to get to a certain level before you're permitted to somehow acquire the gravitation of the office. Priya, you've had a slightly less straight up career than maybe might imagine, but have you come across any hurdles that you've had to overcome? Well, not any more or less as most of us I suppose, but I was just reflecting on this question on the train this morning actually, and I thought, can I pick one more than that? It's a question of have I come across hurdles and how have I tackled them generally? And I guess it's about the ones that I have managed to come across anyway or rather turn them around successfully is when I've had the kind of mindset to look at it as a challenge and I love solving problems. So when I've come across hurdles in my career, I've come across them as a new challenge, a problem to solve, and sort of turned it around its head to try and look at it as an opportunity to disrupt myself and to disrupt what I do and to make the most of the situation and where I am. So I suppose I've always looked at my hurdles more as challenges, but I do have an interesting sort of perspective on what you said, Sarah, and very sort of feeling the same way, particularly when I started as a young Solista in the city in being me. I sound different. I am from a different culture and often would find myself obviously in a room, maturely full of men, but also who look and sound the same and who make the same jokes that make sense to themselves. And not knowing much from Monty Python wasn't even part of that, but trying to fit into a culture that I was never going to fit in and being an outsider. And especially as I said, as a young lawyer I found it sometimes hard at the beginning to find my voice in that room full of men with that deep voice. How do I make myself heard? I do have an interesting point to say, but it was about trying to find my inner voice and my confidence and actually to look at myself as a unique person. So everything that made me different was actually my asset. So I turned them around to my advantage to think actually the fact that I'm different for you means that I've got something different to add to this dialogue and the minute it turned around in my head to think that actually my difference is my USP it absolutely flipped my confidence and it flipped the way I conducted myself at those meetings or made those points. They didn't often land the way I wanted them to, mind you, not everybody liked my different perspectives, but majority of the times they did and when they did and at least they appreciated the fact that I had a different perspective that I had the courage to ask the difficult questions and often the stupid questions that others didn't want to ask. It doesn't mean that they didn't have those questions, just they didn't want to ask those whereas as an outsider as somebody who never fitted in I felt quite comfortable asking those questions and breaking down those assumptions and actually making a very different perspective. So over the years I actually embraced being different and turned that into my USP. I think that's wonderful advice and the never assume anything is always a good one. And there's no such thing as a stupid question actually. It usually is the question that everybody else has. But nobody wants to ask. Does anybody else from the panel have something to share on that? Well I said I nearly left the bar and I'd actually forgotten it. It happened such a long time ago. I'd had my first child and my career had basically completely plummeted. My class didn't think I should be there. They didn't give me any good work. I was finding it quite hard with a very young baby and I thought you know what, what I really want to do is run the take gallery. I'd better leave. So I thought well rather than just leave because I'd always loved being a barrister but rather than just leave I'd better check that actually doing history of art was a good thing to do. So I did the beginning of a degree at Birkbeck in the evenings and I really was thinking that I'd leave and then in the course of that year my practice improved. I actually had another baby and I stayed but I think it was because of exactly that thing of work allocation everybody else's assumptions that I wasn't going to stay, that I wasn't going to be a good barrister that would benefit chambers and I mean frankly in a way the course of my career has shown that they were wrong and so I think actually acting on what you think you want to do and taking a dynamic step was an important thing for me actually and then thank goodness I hadn't just left and gone in a different career path but it does show that sometimes actually believing that you have got other options is a positive. I certainly agree with that I mean I always used to joke that I've always be ready to leave at any time I mean I see some of my partners take out these massive mortgages and I think they commit themselves to being there for like another however many I think why would you ever do that because you can't just walk out in a fit of peak when you want to and actually knowing that you can walk out in a fit of peak gives you so much so much confidence and freedom and actually if you don't have that I think it's very hard so I would have something about it. It's just an observation I'm just looking at all this listed and so impressed at how kind of calm and polished and poised they are and the barristers are like thinking on their feet scribbling notes and then I say well Amanda's a QC and she's not doing that and then I saw the inside of her hand had notes written on that it was busted I feel like I was dropping it Can I say a quick thing on that question and yeah I thought it was an Irish thing we were the two with the scrappy pages yeah so it's just I was really struck by what Amanda said there about almost leaving the bar because I had one of those moments too and I like to think of it as being rather than a glass ceiling issue a sticky floor issue if I could put it that way and it was after I had my second baby I have three children three small children and when you look at the stats for attention of women at the bar it's the second child at which a huge number of women just drop off the edge of a cliff and there's particular issues at the bar because you're self-employed you don't have a human resources department you know if you're someone just to get quite personal who has had multiple miscarriages which I went through you've got to keep it to yourself if you reveal that to or you believe you've got to keep it to yourself if you reveal it to other people if you're unavailable for work so there are a whole series of things which it did actually relate to gender which caused me some difficulties and I've got to say I was someone who for a very long time was one of those people who said I'm not a feminist you know I really did use that and I read a few years ago a quote from Mammo MacDonald who used to run the Irish Country Women's Association and she said she's a mother of 11 and she said I didn't start out as a feminist it was life that made a feminist out of me and I think I had a bit of that because when I first was pregnant with my first child I experienced for the first time soft sexism if I can put it that way and I'd always been one of those people who said you know it's all about equality of opportunity not equality of result I had very fixed views about it and then suddenly it's like a punch in the stomach when it happens to you and the way it happened to me when I was pregnant the first time was I was very open about it right from the outset I was doing some quite high profile big cases and then one of the members said to me oh I had a call from one of your solicitors earlier who's going to instruct you in this big case and I said she's actually pregnant and she's very tired and it had gone somewhere else and you know what do you do with that in a self-employed profession you know ring to get the now non-existent brief which has gone somewhere else you know there's particular difficulties with that and assumptions and I did kind of drink the Kool-Aid about never being able to say that I'm a silk I do it all the time I mean even when it's very peripheral because I just feel for a very long time I didn't see women saying that I didn't see women saying in court when they were asked to turn up the next day for an early sitting but it was obviously going to cause them difficulty saw people panicking and sending emails below the table and not saying it and that was something which impacted on women more and I'm afraid I now say it because I think it's important when you are further along rather like you were saying with your scooter and so on and you've got to show we are different and I think we've got to show that we're different and that's the only way that we're going to change mindsets and you need the role models I think you can't see you can't be it I mean maybe not scooter but knowing that you can to watch our care knowing that that is an issue that's okay to talk about those sorts of things and for it to be an issue I think is so important I agree role modelling is extremely important both at the bar and at the city farms because I remember as a young associates when I came up to senior associate I had those awkward questions as well am I going to start family am I going to apply for the partnership am I going to be on the bench and so on and so forth and I remember looking at the fair few women partners they were especially in corporate finance and frankly, scarily the two of them when I looked at them I thought sorry but I don't want to be one of them the role models that I was looking at at that time were essentially women you know cloaked as men or vice versa if you see what I mean so they had adopted themselves to be in a male environment and they were very much like men or even more ruthless and I thought actually that's not the role model so I totally agree and I think that's another thing that's changing though in the last couple of days since we started off and I think there are more positive role models today where women are embracing being a mum embracing being a woman embracing up like a woman and behaving like a woman and it's acceptable Can I just add one of the things that I think women do are great to service to other women women in positions of seniority is by pretending it's easy or pretending they haven't had any issues or saying they've managed it all by themselves because honestly I don't know anybody who's got caring responsibilities in particular who has managed it alone in the sense that they haven't got reliable childcare help from grandparents or sisters or friends or whatever it is and to pretend that you you can do it all on your own I think it just makes other women go well I'm just not like her I can't do that that's not me and you actually disempower people who you ought to be giving a a book career of hope to but I've one of my senior female partner he's sadly now died the advice that she said the best decision she ever made was the choice of her husband and I would echo that I should have said husband too sorry I messed him up my husband has basically made my made my life just he went part-time when we had children he's taken primary responsibility for so much of the involvement with running the house and the children that actually I feel that I'm so grateful for that and I know that it's really hard when I say that to women in work because they're saying you can only do this if you've got that and of course you can't only do the job if you have that sort of partner but you know that he's the one I'm most grateful for so big thanks for Charles I realise that we're at risk of only getting to two questions it's alright we're covering a lot of ground here I just wanted to mention imposter syndrome in connection with this discussion because it seems to me what Amanda just said about women doing such a disservice to others and indeed other people who've made it pretending that it's easy and not revealing the struggles then contributes to people below feeling just as you did or just as I did then why am I here I mean in the discussion beforehand with women from both panels I mean look at the women on this panel there's a number of people saying to be honest I got the invitation I thought there was some mistake I am afraid if this was an all male panel I do not think I would have heard the same conversations those of you who know my work may be a little surprised at this but there's a quote from Margaret Thatcher the iron lady once said I wasn't lucky I deserved it and I think when we look around this room I see many people and I fully appreciate imposter syndrome it's not exclusive to women the number of women do or the study show tend to suffer it I see many people here who probably belittled their achievements say they were lucky they were in the right place at the right time and so on and actually I think we should be a bit more Margaret Thatcher in this way I think that's a marvelous point at which maybe to move on to our next question which is an allied question which is we are a very successful group of women here in the first two rows and probably looking around the rooms I recognise some of you in the rest of the room too and we all probably struggle with work-life balance or just trying to juggle all the balls which I feel particularly acutely at the moment as I'm juggling a couple of jobs as well as everything else that's going on and I'm sure we've all got our own way of trying to prioritise or cut back or how do we not kill ourselves by trying to have it all or do it all so I don't know who wants to start on this Jessica well it's a really difficult one I think it's one that most people battle with on a daily basis honestly trying to work out if you've got the balance right and sort of seeking that elusive balance and I think the reality is that there probably isn't a perfect one and so the idea of this perfect attainment where your life is somehow in seamless order where you're doing exactly what you should be at work you're doing exactly what you should be at home and you're sort of super mum and super worker and super every other role that you have in your life you're never going to quite feel like that and I think accepting that is really important and recognising that there isn't this sort of perfection 100% if you're not achieving you are somehow failing yourself and everybody else and it's a conversation that I have particularly I think one of the most vulnerable point I've certainly experienced this coming back from maternity leave that cruel reality that the world kept moving without you you were dispensable effectively and trying to find your voice again and your role again after that I think is particularly sort of challenging time especially when you're then at your most juggling of everything and it can be really really tough but I think that perfection idea is the one that has to be eliminated first and foremost so that you can actually recognise and you know this is when imposter syndrome creeps in with a vengeance as well because it tells you that you're just not good enough at anything you're doing and you're letting everybody down and that's a real challenge in a way you're your own worst enemy and sort of controlling that voice inside and not allowing that to get out of control so that actually you do keep some perspective on what's sort of possible and attainable and what the contribution you're making is still a really valid one in everything that you're doing and trying to keep yourself sort of sane through that I think is a really important thing and then of course there's the question of logistics and practicalities and you've just got to try and sort things in a way that works for you and it will be very different depending on your combination of your other half your or your support network around you what you can use where you can get the help that you need to let things tick along and allow you to feel vaguely in control but I think lawyers are the worst for this because I think lawyers tend to be perfectionists and control freaks and those two things are things that will not give you a work-life balance actually I think you just need to I mean what I always try and do and I think my partners would say I have far too good a work-life balance because I actually swim quite seriously so I do quite a lot of swim training and how can you do that and I just think because I actually every now and then take a step back and think what do I want to do with my life and how do I want to chop it up and that's how it sits and actually but you have to give up on the perfectionism and I think the Chubbers lawyers are perfectionists you have to be really strict with yourself you have to give yourself a break and be strategic about the way you use your time you're super busy and I think before kids you feel you're super busy and then you have kids and then your brain explodes but you have to develop strategies to deal with how you fit what you need to do within the time and what is really a priority I mean for me actually this was a piece of advice I received from a fellow female partner when I returned from a charity league which is ask yourself the life or death question at the weekend is it life or death that you need to work a particular piece of client work whatever now you've got kids and if the answer is no it's not life or death then don't do it just don't do it when you're working in a silent lotto the answer might be slightly different for you I'm glad to say my words that question didn't work because that's the question that led to me and buying an air bag an air bag and an air bus for my chambers because I was tired of making a hamster nest I had a firester gowns I was going to ask Trona next you have that sort of life or death for other people type career and you know it's actually not wrong to want to say actually my priorities are this now I mean that's the other thing is to try and not I try and not judge other people's choices or things like this whether they choose to work have their children brought up by somebody else or whether they choose not to get married or whether you know that we have to find our own individual I think my answer to work-life plans has to work as a prison there with the lowest rung of the judiciary so I'm an immigration judge in Ireland and I'm looking at the person the highest rung of the judiciary here I don't know what your respect for your work-life plans has to have me grace recently so weekend I'm working I think but I do very much commend the judiciary to animals there's a real drive to have more women in decision making roles this is something that I didn't think I'd get through my half of the ring kind of very much aspiration before I was the youngest tribunal member in Ireland when I did so to move away from posture syndrome which I feel on this panel but and then how I overcome that just to go back to question the hurdle around being female being a disadvantage you can overcome it with merit like some of the people you can overcome with overconfidence which I have to say lean in it's the big point to make on this one so I am having been in my job five months in Ireland, deputy chair of my tribunal came up came up I applied for that and I came first runner up for that and undeterred with my lack of success then when the position of chair person came six months later, I applied for that so just lean in, if you're going for jobs that you're not getting that means you're doing it right you're aiming high, you're aiming above yourself when I was at training in the UK for immigration judge there's a whole kind of mixed bags of people I heard, this echoes something that Keelan said I heard from a woman she was going to ring them up and turn it down because a mistake could be made she said I've only done immigration law for two years that was much earlier in my 15 year long career et cetera et cetera and then there were men in the room who'd never done a single immigration law case and were like this is just a stepping stone to being a recorder but I'm sure I'll be equal to the task can't be that difficult so that's the attitude lean in, be overconfident if you want to overcome and the patriarchy which is holding us all back so on the how do you manage work-life balance I mean my answer can be very short pepper which you'll probably like badly is my answer but I think the right things we can do I mean on the life and death type question when I was pregnant with my first child at the time about three quarters of the work that I was doing was emergency out of our judicial review work for children so children who were street homeless children who were in abusive households and where social services had utterly failed them so a whole series of these challenges and at the time there were very few of us doing that work so if you got the call asking you to do the emergency duty judge application that evening and you said no and you knew that Ian Wise and Steve Broch couldn't do it you knew you were leaving that child stuck and it was a really it meant that you did take that upon yourself and what you said Pippa earlier about in relation to asylum being able to say I don't have to do it all and I just took a strategic decision that actually that work is very important to me I wanted to continue doing it it could not be three quarters of my practice with a young family so I moved things around I reduced the amount of work that I was doing we got more junior people in chambers and in other chambers who were interested in that work to start doing it so then there was a wider pool of people who now do it and now there aren't only three or four of us who do it there's actually unfortunately rather a lot of us who end up having to do it and one other issue that I'd say is a large part of the work that I do concerns inquests and this week for example I've just been in New York acting for a number of journalists who've been harassed for their work so Maria Ressa in the Philippines and also for a number of bereaved families where their loved ones are journalists and have died simply for doing their jobs and it has been difficult obviously being away from your family I've gone from Saudi Arabia to New York and I'm going to Strasburg on Monday but something that I think can really drive you doing that kind of work is when you're missing your kids there is no stronger reminder of how important it is to do a really bloody good job for the bereaved family who've lost a loved one and who have that feeling in spades so I think when we think about work-life balance I never like thinking about the two spheres of life being completely separate because actually there is a synthesis between them and I'll end with a synthesis which I thought was quite interesting so my daughter who's now 10, nearly 11 has become a bit of a social justice campaigner so she's now you have to start I do think there's something that you can be quite proud of when you see that it did result a few years ago in her school project being the Royal Courts of Justice made from toilet rolls it wasn't one of my proudest moments but actually I think it is really important for children, for my kids one girl, two boys to see that actually women can be in these roles women can be doing these important jobs and that's not necessarily something that I saw in Dublin in the 1970s and I think that fits with what people were saying earlier about you can't be what you don't see I also think when Pippa actually sent us some of these questions and she said are there any you don't want to answer for two reasons one is I don't think there is a thing called life work balance because for me work is an incredibly important part of my life and I really love my job and a bit like you're saying I'm always trying my best to do my best for my clients whoever they may be and I think what I do is quite important and I think that's actually a really unusual thing that lawyers have that actually not many other areas of life necessarily do obviously doctors and teachers but there are lots of people in work who don't think their jobs very important and so I think that's a lovely thing for us to have but so that was part one I didn't really want to answer it and the part two was none at all so I think that you but you are right having children who have not necessarily always appreciated the way that I haven't managed to be where they wanted me to be and I haven't really appreciated it much either but now I think they are appreciative and they do understand though regrettably none of them want to follow me into being a lawyer they do actually appreciate that the woman just as much as anybody else can lead an important role in life yeah I mean if I was going to tell an anecdote from my own life my eldest daughter now 28 then 9 asked you know what was she going to do when she grew up she said I'm going to be a proper mummy you know and she hates this story by the way so don't repeat it and I said oh right what does a proper mummy do and she went well she's at home when her children come home from school and she makes cakes hmm right okay and that took me back a bit but I did have this but actually like my job very very much I think even being a legal academic is quite important I don't save lives but maybe I train the next generation to help do important work on the rule of law and let's not forget how important that is and now as an older woman in the workplace she A says I never said that but B she says you would have been foul mum if you weren't working and thank goodness you were working because now I can see that it is possible but I agree that you can't get everything right all of the time and sometimes you just have to be good enough whether that's a good enough worker or a good enough parent or a good enough daughter or friend or the other sorts of things that we might be and juggling and it's not going to be right all or any of the time but I absolutely take your point Keelan about being strategic about things that were important to me I started asking myself when I kept being asked to do this, that and the other is this something that is interesting or important to me and if not I learned to say no even if necessary saying it in front of the mirror every morning no thank you not no sorry just no so a slightly odd question but I'll ask it anyway do any of our panel think being a woman has actually been a real advantage in our careers we were talking about this while we were putting on our makeup which we don't really wear in the loo before coming into this and I think that's the answer to the question I think there's a plus and minus here I think we all said that the impact you can make if you are the only woman in the room there's a lot of disadvantages about being the only woman in the room but people may well remember you afterwards but it's a very negative positive I think I would say no I would say in the kind of air of law that I do it doesn't really help at all I've only ever been specifically instructed for someone because they were a woman and I think that's terrible that's the way it was it's kind of organised but I do think there was a different thing going on which may be partly to do with being female which is that when I started I was very, very young and the wig helped actually genuinely helped to have a wig on because that just does slightly change what you look like hopefully but it did mean people underestimated me and I don't know whether that's to do with being female but it definitely was to do with looking very young and so that actually professionally did have a positive result quite often so I wanted to make a similar point I mean I think the answer for me overall is on balance it has not been an advantage and those of you who watched the live stream of the Supreme Court hearing for example will have seen that every single advocate was male and then suddenly on Twitter people were saying well why are all the advocates male and there was a really pernicious unpleasant thread which developed which was well meaning which was well that's because women go into family law and immigration so the kind of tone was there aren't talented women in public law now I am a QC in public law so I was pretty outraged but then of course if you start wading in it looks like sour grapes and you see this every year those of you who read the directories for example if you look at the directories for both solicitors and barristers in public law all of the star performers grade one, grade two the vast vast majority of them are men at the bar is Dina Rose and Dina Rose is wonderful but she's not the only one there's a whole range of other very talented women and it just doesn't occur to people and in fact some of the people who spotted the problem in the middle of the hearing were people who it had never registered when they were instructing or when they were making those decisions early it suddenly just struck them when suddenly online everyone was saying why have we got this phalanx of white men but on the underestimation point there was a really good study a few years ago by researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University and I don't know many of you know this they concluded that female named storms have historically killed more people because people consider them not to be as risky and then they take fewer precautions brilliant study so over six decades the female named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male named storms the difference was even more pronounced apparently when comparing strongly masculine names to strongly female names and the research you said this our model suggests that changing a severe hurricane's name from Charlie to Eloise could nearly triple its death toll so the reason I raised that is I think women are underestimated even meteorologically there is an advantage when you're underestimated because actually you go in people haven't necessarily taken you as seriously as they should have and I think sometimes that helps people don't prepare as well they underestimate how your points are landing they think you're not having an impact with the judge in the same way that in fact you are so I think if they underestimate us using the Illinois Arizona State University study we can wreak havoc and that's an advantage anybody else on the panel want to have? the answer I think is just no it's my plan just to tell a joke I didn't tell but it's an advantage in my career no it's an advantage in my work as a decision maker yes massively yes so this year in Ireland a colleague of mine turned down a rape based asylum claim because the woman hadn't gone for counselling and he said that no one here wouldn't go for counselling and this was relevant to the credibility assessment and that was refused there's a different approach that I think I take and women take to claims of gender based violence which arise in the course of my work and it's a different type of sensitivity that comes with the fact that I've had friends who've disclosed rape to me you know the understanding that we as women have of sexual assault moving through the world so just yeah in my work I can spot gaps I will go back and look at if there's a late disclosure in advance I did this recently I said note that the claim involves you know trafficking and all this type of thing wondering if you checked with your client what gender they'd like a decision maker and the solicitor wrote back and said yeah we'd absolutely like female gender of course and I said great we'll get the interpreter presenting officer myself and few whatever and then the male solicitor walks in you know and it's just not get unless you talk to a victim particularly a close friend or something like that and they talk to you about the impact of looking at a female versus the person who's the gender of the perpetrator the impact of that on you emotionally is so intense and just getting that in a way hopefully contributes to me being a better decision maker I hope I think it's a brilliant brilliant point for the future of the judiciary and absolutely everybody needs to be represented in the judiciary we can't just have particular sectors of society we can't just have one gender over another or one background over another because it's the whole of the experience of the um panels of judges that make a huge difference and if I may say so for a moment that's one of the great things about it being unanimous decision did anybody else have anybody anybody possibly thinking that it may have been slightly an advantage well I should have said I mean a lot of my work is on women's rights I know my a lot of my clients like having a female advocate and a female lawyer but I still you know so lots of my work I think it's an advantage but overall unbalanced absolutely not anyone else on that empathy point which you all sort of touched upon and that's obviously extremely relevant to the work that you do because you work in women's rights or the judiciary but I think even from sort of private practice or looking at things that we're doing in legal technology or other bates I think arguably is there an advantage to be a woman because majority of these solutions that we are trying to develop and the sort of approaches that we are trying to apply design thinking and other things which are very human centric and which require a lot of empathy well very early research but a project that we are collaborating with Oxford University on has shown that a lot of people who are leading these initiatives in private practice or legal technology companies or others actually the people who are leading tend to be and arguably is it an advantage does it come easier to us to empathise with the sort of human centric problems and therefore come up with different kinds of solutions possibly okay well we're running up against time so very very quickly I wondered if I could ask for a tip from each of our wonderful panel what sort of tip would you give to a young woman starting a career in the legal profession today now Keelan said she didn't want to start I'm sorry it starts with you have you got a tip for somebody a woman starting out in the legal profession yes it's a fantastic career you should really stick at it and you should believe that you can get where you want to get to and it may be funnily enough that you don't get to exactly the same destination that you thought you were going to start off from you need to be open to different meanders but you really want something I think my experience has been that it takes longer sometimes than if you're male but you can definitely get there my tip would be actually it's something you mentioned it's learning the power of no I think we as women are really good at saying yes we're often asked to get involved in a law firm like mine and a whole host of non-chargeable work which we therefore can't charge for and therefore we can't be in life's trouble and a lot of really great stuff but we as women are very good at that stuff we say yes we involve ourselves we throw ourselves in it doesn't leave us enough time to actually charge the hours put money on the bottom line be in line for promotion I'm not saying you shouldn't do that but just choose what you do very carefully and very strategically do this stuff that really matters like this you're really passionate about be strategic about what you take up that would be my tip bring yourself to work from the start I think that's the key but you know there's no point trying to pretend to be something you're not and actually you will do better from being yourself as well I'll just add to that and build up on that and I'd say that be as ambitious if not more than your male colleagues do not let anything limit you nothing would limit you that's what everyone said and it's try and think about your career not as a latter try and think about it as a jungle gym speaking personally when you come across hurdles you don't have to go on to the next ladder is there something else that you would do which would be equally fulfilling if not more is there some other way in which you can bring your passion and yourself to the career to the work and life and really make the most of your life as a whole I think don't feel like you have to be somebody else in order to succeed at what you want to do and so it's sort of similar to Sarah's point really channel your genuine self and don't think that somehow that's not good enough lovely get a mentor so look ahead of you kind of 10 years ahead find someone in a career in a position you want to be in call call them out of the blue on LinkedIn and say do you have time for maybe coffee I think you're brilliant whatever call call one of the women on this panel it's enormously flattering no one is going to say no that's terrible it's enormously flattering thing to be asked and then develop a relationship with one or more people to pull yourself up the ladder and then do the reverse look down have you got a mentor even if you're just a student now you could be helping someone in secondary school in an access to law program in an underrepresented group or something like that we've got intersectionality more disadvantage there's some way that you can also reach out because check your privilege as well we're all exceptionally privileged to be in this room so look down and look up the ladder so I suppose as a human rights lawyer the job is a very strange one and on days when you win when your clients win it's the best job in the world so you know on the day when the Hillsborough family's got the right result or this week when the Daphne Daphne Karawana Galitius family finally got the inquiry that we've been pushing for or indeed dare I say it I might be tempting fate here when the law it appears is gradually changing on abortion in Northern Ireland you know then they are fantastic days but the flip side of having wins like that is that on days when you lose it really matters and it can be devastating and you know how devastating it is for your clients so for that reason I have on the wall in chambers a quote from Roald Dahl I'm going to lower the tone here which says I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life he taught me that if you're interested in something no matter what it is go at it at full speed ahead embrace it with both arms hug it, love it, above all become passionate about it lukewarm is no good hot is no good either quite hot and passionate is the only thing to be so my advice would be get a job which you are quite hot and passionate about our working lives are long you have to get something that gets you out of bed in the morning and that keeps you going on those tough days it's a privilege to work with clients like the clients that I have and to be doing a job that I'm quite hot and passionate about I think that's a wonderful note to finish applause I'd very much like to thank everybody on the panel for your contributions we have plenty of time at tea to continue our discussions for those of you who want a little preview of the wonderful book Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court they are upstairs there is also a flyer for a book by Celia Wells called Women in Law which is a very interesting autobiography about her journey through law as well as a legal academic and a woman from a disadvantaged background flyers for that upstairs and I very much look forward to coming back for the second session at 250