 I'm Sarah Worthington and I'd like first to add to the faculty welcome to all of you to this marvellous afternoon. It really has been something quite fantastic. Now, I know you're all here to listen to these three people, not to me, but I want to say three things before we start. First of all, the first two panels that we've had. All women, so not great diversity on that front, but actually what stood out was how diverse they were in personality and ways of engaging and their attitude to their jobs in the world. And I think that's something to take away, that we're enriched by our differences. And my association with Cambridge hasn't been as long as most of the people who spoke to you. I arrived here in 2011 and perhaps as a newcomer I can see with much greater energy and enthusiasm, the miracle of it all. So this is your Cambridge family, make the most of it. So that is my first message. Secondly, this final panel is in some senses more of the same. Three more marvellous Cambridge women. I suppose the difference is that at least two of these women really, really don't need any introduction. I mean, if you don't realise that we have a Supreme Court and that they've been working during their recess with Lady Hale as the top judge and Lady Arden as one of the three female judges, then I am not sure where you'd be. So I would like to add my welcome to them. I know this is what you've all come for. But thirdly, Eilish Farran. I did meet Eilish in the early 1990s where she was a reasonably young academic. So she is a Cambridge student, then a young academic, then a professor, then chair of the faculty and now provise chancellor for institutional and international relations. I'm not quite sure what else is left to run in the university. But she does it with great intelligence and grace and elegance. And I'm going to leave you in her hands. Thank you all. Well, it's my great honour to be here with these two amazing women. You've had so many firsts in your life, your professional careers. I am not going to take up the time listing them all. But I want to perhaps begin with a new first. Please, will you be the first, the inaugural president of the girly swaths club? So, Brenda, you've said with your customary modesty that it was easy to be first in some ways because there were so few women who came before you. Mary, you've made the point that one of the things that was important at the start of your career when people were not sure about you being a barrister, that there was a woman that you could look to as a role model. Now, things have moved on a bit since then and we've talked about this already this afternoon. There are role models for us. You know you really are a role model. You're an icon when you've become a character, the lead character in a children's book. But if I may just for a moment reflect a little bit more personally because I left Cambridge, I went to the city. I went to the city in the mid-80s and see them law firm as PIPPA. There was a woman partner, the first woman partner in a magic circle firm. Around that time there were a few others coming through. There was one notorious story that went around about the woman partner, Slotan Mae, who dared to have a child but she'd gone back to work two or three weeks after giving birth and that was seen to be the standard of the time, not making it easy for other women. But there was one woman whose name I kept coming up across time and time again. Mary Arden. If you were doing corporate law in the 1980s and 90s in the city of London, you needed Mary Arden. You didn't go to court very much because Mary Arden's opinion was what was going to give you the green light or not for your transaction. I remember one transaction where the whole timetable had to be adjusted because Mary Arden was abroad. I said she'd come back. I'd be able to move on. I'd just love to know from both of you, maybe you Mary first. When did you first know you were a role model? How do you feel being a role model? Is it something you welcome or responsibility? How does it play out with you? That's very kind of you to ask me that. Can I just say what I consider a role model to be? When I was growing up in the great city of Liverpool there was a woman barrister who excelled and her name was Rose Heilbron. She was not only stunning to look at, but she was very effective. The newspaper, an evening, would come through the letter box. It had a lot of newspapers there. It dropped on the floor and there was the headline Rosie saves young man from gallows. It was just part of the narrative that a woman could be a barrister. She was very exceptional and I don't think that I could possibly compare myself to her. The fact that she was there was truly important to us. It became an assumption that women could do the job. I heard a programme on the radio a few weeks ago by Cherie Blair and she was explaining that her mother actually used to go to court to listen to Rose Heilbron because there wasn't any television. So you might as well go down to the courts and listen to her. But she was very popular. Just turning briefly back to Eilish's question, the reason why I got pupillage because being a barrister requires you to go for pupillage and it was very difficult for women to get pupillage when I wanted it was through a partner in the firm which Eilish worked. But it happened that the partner was the nephew of a very great friend of my father who was prevailed upon to ask the set of chambers if they would take a pupil. And as my pupil master put it, when I became a judge at the celebration that we have in court on those occasions, he said when your best solicitors tell you that you should take a pupil you don't say no, whoever it is. So that was my great good fortune but things have moved on getting pupillage is a matter of merit these days and competition. But actually to your question, how do I feel about being a role model? Well, I'm not so sure that I feel it every day that that's the position. But what I would like to think is that people share my enthusiasm for the law and for finding out what the law is, for progressing the law, for promoting it, for making it more suitable for every day. That's what I'd like people to go away with and to think, yes, I want to be a lawyer. Brenda? Well, you asked when did I first realise that I was a role model? I don't think I realised it until the Supreme Court came along. You know, I was just doing my job in the various many, many jobs. I loved what we heard earlier about all the different jobs that you can do and not having linear careers. I love the jungle gym thing. I'm going to use that, sorry. But I was just doing each of these jobs and doing them as best I could. But the Supreme Court, one of the things about it is it's so much more visible than any other court. Anybody can walk in, anybody can watch our being live streamed, sometimes occasionally we're televised, so we are much more visible. And I think it was only then that I began to realise, yes, people do seeming as a role model. That's a very humbling and horrifying thing. Because, I mean, you sometimes get things wrong. You don't always do things the way that you want people to copy you. And so if you're a role model, maybe people are going to copy you. Don't wear broaches. Actually do wear broaches. I have noticed that since Mary joined us, she's been wearing broaches. And I have asked her, please, please, please, when I retire, will she keep up the good work? So there are lots of things one could do. One hopes to encourage and to warn young women, other people. You're going to come on to other people as well. Because I think the fact that there are women doing the job that Mary and I are doing is also an encouragement to other people who are not standard quadrangle to quadrangle to quadrangle boys, as I call them. If I could just follow up on something you said there, because it's actually really reassuring to know that you get things wrong. I wonder if you would just sell a little bit more about something that you got wrong. I hadn't quite finished the question. That you got wrong at the time, but then later felt, well, actually, I learned from that it was good. Yes. I haven't thought very hard about the answer to that question. No, I'm sorry, I've just sprung that one. Yes. Okay, so every single dissenting judgement, you obviously got wrong. By definition. But of course quite a few of them, I actually got right. Eventually. Yes. Because things move on and your dissenting judgement is turned into law. Usually by parliament agreeing with your dissenting judgement and overturning the decision of your fellow justices or law lords or whatever it is. So yes, it's the times when I have not managed to persuade my colleagues of the correctness of my view of things that I think is the most troubling. And the other thing that I think I sometimes get wrong is procrastination. And I think we all have to look at ourselves and ask, do we delay longer than we should in doing something about something? Whatever it is, whether it's a judgement, whether it's a problem of relationships at work or whatever. Should one just let it stew? Should one go and do something about it? And I think that's one of the biggest problems of leadership and indeed collegiality. So I do beat myself up sometimes about not going along and saying, but I don't like to go and lobby my colleagues. I think they should make their own minds up. But of course I want to persuade them that my view is right. So those are the sorts of difficult judgements that I worry about a lot of the time. Can I just go back to the broaches for a moment? I know you all love. But there's a serious point here. When I came to the bar, there was only one woman in Lincoln's Inn and she smoked a Sherlock Holmes pipe. So there was a tremendous pressure of conformity. And even now I see it. And for many years women used to experiment with things like pinstripe trousers. At the bar there is an enormous pressure on women to conform in their dress to the way men look. And I think this is part of the problem, not Brenda, but myself, wearing suits. The amazing thing about Brenda is that she's completely broken with that. And she's wearing a broach because you couldn't see a man ever wear a broach. But this is a symbol to me that we don't have to conform, that we can be ourselves. So I think it's a really serious point. And I had a question that I had given you advance sort of warning off. It kind of follows on from that. And it is actually prompted by something that Gina Miller wrote in her book. She said, well, if I look smart, it makes me feel confident. And then other people's bigoted assumptions have less power to harm me. So for women there's a bit of a conundrum there in a sense. Because we don't want to be judged on what we look like, what we choose to wear, how we present ourselves to the world. But you're at the same time for a lot of women doing exactly those things, choosing what you want to wear, presenting yourself in a way, taking advantage of the fact that perhaps there's more freedom in how women choose to dress to work and the like, is something that the women find quite empowering. And I would just love to know, given that for time in your career you had to conform, but now you can be more expressive if you like, just how that idea of using what you wear to give yourself confidence or not, whether that resonates with you and how you've dealt with that over the years. Well, I think it's a metaphor when Gina Miller says that. I think you've got to find that thing which you can present as your hallmark of what you can do, which is done to the best of your ability. Of course, there are many things that no doubt many people can do, but what would strike me is that idea about dress is really throwing light on this problem that women generally lack confidence, and they've got to have something to hold on to with which to be able to go forward. I myself share that problem, but I like to think that if I have thought about a problem very hard and I've researched it very hard that I then have something to show which will make me confident in dealing with the wider world. The message I'd like to get across is that lack of confidence is a huge problem for us women because we haven't got the history of people of our sex doing the job for generation after generation. I think we have to remember something that Mary Curie once said, nothing is to be feared, it is only to be understood, and she was a really great, high achieving woman. Well, women have the luxury of choice because we can choose what to wear much more than most professional men can. I feel very sorry for my male colleagues. They all have to turn up in suits. I hate suits, as maybe a parent, and they do all turn up in suits with minor variations between them, the style of their suits, but on the whole. So the only form of expression that they have got is their ties. Sometimes the way they tie their ties, close watchers of a certain recently retired lawlord would observe that he doesn't know how to tie a tie. We have taken him to task on this and he said, no, it's not deliberate, I just don't know how to tie a tie. But that's their only method of self-expression, whereas we do have the luxury of choice, but that makes life hard, doesn't it? Because what about all those bright city women lawyers and others who are told that they have to wear high heels? No woman should have to wear high heels if she doesn't want to wear high heels. She might like not to have bunions when she's my age. People ought to have a choice of footwear so that it is comfortable, and you can be completely smart and elegant without wearing high heels. Who are they wearing high heels for? You know why. Women barristers did not have the choice of wearing trousers in court until the 90s. It was an extraordinary situation. I've had the luxury all my life. Apart from the ten years I was in the Royal Courts of Justice when I could choose what to wear. I was an academic and then a public servant, so I wasn't wearing uniform in court most of the time. I was extremely fortunate. I got into the habit of wearing what I found comfortable. Then I spent ten years in the RCJ when I had to wear suits and robes in the Court of Appeal. Then I went off to Parliament. Again, I could wear what I liked. That's the great luxury that I have had. I would just say to women, I think, you have the luxury of choice. Be, of course, comfortable. Be tidy. Be clean. Look as good as you feel like looking. You should go far. Thank you. I was reminded, as you were speaking, of that period in the early 2000s, the dotcom boom when the law firms and others decided that a way of keeping their staff was to introduce a more relaxed dress code and, boy, did that really confuse a lot of men. Those who turned up is something that looked like their gardening clothes. I think they were quite glad when they were able to conform back. I'm going to leave the question of wigs, because I think that one could occupy us for some time. I'm going to move on a little bit. Just next month in Cambridge, the University Library will be opening an exhibition which they've called The Rising Tide, which that's about looking at the progression of women at the University of Cambridge unimaginable today that really, how recent it was, that women were actually able to take degrees in this university. We've moved on quite some distance. We still have a huge amount of work to do, just to look at our professors. We're still hovering in the mid-20s, and we'll move on here again. I was a student here in the 1980s. There were women in the faculty, some very wonderful women. I'm going to just mention one, and with apologies to the others. Cherry Hopkins, who was such an inspiration to so many of us. I don't think as a student I was aware of the fact who was employed as a university lecturer or a college lecturer, but to think that even at that point in the early 1980s there weren't any women who were actually university employees is astounding. It's good that we're celebrating The Rising Tide, and everything we've heard this afternoon indicating that there is also a Rising Tide in the profession, the entry-level stats are good, but we're certainly nowhere near the high-water mark. So my question to you is, how are we going to get there? Well, for a start, the important thing is to realise how important gender equality is. Nobody really thought it was important until the turn of the millennium, I don't think. There was lip service paid to it by the powers that be, but they all thought trickle-up would work. But I can remember going to a meeting organised by the Association of Women Barristers, the Association of Women Solicitors. I think we hadn't yet formed the UK Association of Women Judges, but it was in committee room 10 in the Committee Corridor in the Houses of Parliament, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Wolf, was there. Beverly McLachlan, the Chief Justice of Canada, came over, and she talked about the importance. She had four reasons, which I quote all the time, importance of having women in the judiciary and what a difference it had made in Canada and how they had managed it in Canada by a concerted effort between the politicians, the profession and the judiciary to bring all this about with public support. Now, that speech, I think, changed the mind of the Lord Chief Justice at the time, and he began to realise that there was a problem and things needed to be done. So things are being done, but progress is still rather slow. There are some encouraging things. There are reasons to be cheerful, there are reasons to be depressed. Mary and I can talk about both of those things. Reasons to be cheerful, a recently retired Supreme Court Justice predicted that it would take 50 years to get gender equality on the bench. Well, we did the sums, and in the court's judiciary, the tribunal judiciary is about 45% and has been for ages, but in the court's judiciary, it's been going up at an increase of 1.34% a year for the last seven years, and if it went on going up at that rate, it would take fewer than 14 years to get gender parity in the court's judiciary. So that's a reason to be cheerful. On the other hand, of course, we know that there's much more parity the lower down the court system you go. So justice tribunals are much more even, the district bench is much more even, the circuit bench is less even. We're only a quarter in the High Court and the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court. With Mary's arrival, we went up to a quarter, but with my departure, we'll be going down again. And then you look at, what's happening amongst QCs? How many women QCs are there? Well, that is going up, but it's going up quite slowly, but it has gone up a lot in the last few years. So there are reasons to be cheerful. But Berners was mentioned earlier this afternoon. You have this really high profile case. Can't think what it was called. In the Supreme Court, televised all over the world, there were at least three women on the bench, but there were no women addressing us. And there were, I think, no women in row two either. I don't think there were only women juniors. We did do some sums. We looked at the appearances in the Supreme Court. Hang on, I've got to try and find it now, sitting on something. Yes, yes. 2009 to 2010, first year of operation of the Supreme Court, women amounted to only 21% of the appearances before the court. This is the barristers. While men, of course, were 79%. 2014 to 15, it was 20 and 80%. This last year, 2018 to 2019, it was 23 and 77. So it's not changed a lot over the last 10 years. And most of those women appearances were juniors. It's more difficult for us to do the sums about asking ourselves, well, who was actually on their feet? Because you can't always find that out. Even if it's a QC, they're not on their feet. Somebody like Karen Stain, for example, appeared loads of times in the Supreme Court quite a few times, but she was never on her feet. Or at least only once. So my feeling is that those who are actually on their feet in the Supreme Court are overwhelmingly men still. And of course those are the people from whom they are really hoping to recruit the top judges. I mean, they will let other people in. They'll let people like me in, but they really want to recruit from the top baristers. And so I do find that not a reason to be cheerful. So we've got some ups and some not-so-ups. I'm a bit concerned about this notion of a rising tide because it suggests two things. Firstly, that the progress which is being made is a straight line. And secondly, it suggests that the some external force like the moon, which is causing the backwards and forwards movement, I have heard it so many times said that the reason why there aren't more women in the judiciary well is women don't apply. That's usually one reason. And the other one is, well, it's a structure of the bar and most judges come from the bar, at least the High Court and above. And so unless the bar does something about it, the judiciary can't be blamed for nothing happening. Actually, the real reasons why there was suddenly an upsurge in the appointment of women was that the penny dropped, that men suddenly appreciated that there ought to be more women than there were, and there were then suddenly people who were prepared to do something about it. And it wasn't until there was that change of culture that the numbers significantly increased. And I would like to say this, it's something which bears on this point where the judiciary thought it was nothing to do with them, is that working practices have a huge amount to do with the number of women in the profession. And if there's nothing to happen, it is that there should be more flexibility within the judiciary and that there should be fewer rigid rules about when you can work and how you can work and so on. I would also like to see, somehow or other, mentoring particularly for women who are coming back from having had a family and been out of work and therefore want to transition into full work and giving them the eye-opening perspectives that they might be able to do some judicial work or ultimately do some judicial work. And I'd like to think that those things would help them. And of course I also think role models help. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to continue using the rising tide theme, although I think that's a really important point and I can see members of the University Library nodding their head and perhaps wanting to take that back in some way. But I want to continue to use it to bring in another angle to this using another sort of related idea of the rising tide lifts all boats. So we may have a lot of work to do around gender equality but how do we really ensure that that also brings with it genuinely broad diversity within the profession? Brenda and I looked at each other a moment ago when she used the word female because actually I lead on equality and diversity for the university. And from the students I'm increasingly being told that we should stop using the word female because it excludes those who cannot give birth who regard themselves as women. And it is also limiting to describe ourselves by reference to the fact that we give birth or can give birth. So how do we genuinely bring people with us in our gender equality quest? I'm also told by university capacity that a lot of the work that we've been doing around gender equality, the Athena SWAN programme, which forces us to really look at our stats and challenge them. There's some research that says the beneficiaries of that Athena SWAN work are white middle class women. What about all the others? How do we ensure that gender equality doesn't become actually exclusionary in its impact, Brenda? Well you know much more about that than I do. After all, you're at the forefront of working on those issues, we are not. Again, the good thing about working for gender equality is that it makes people think about equality generally because the arguments for gender equality are very similar to the arguments for other sorts of equality and diversity. So it makes people think about that as well and also begin to take that on board. Our struggle is other people's struggle as well. We all have to take the point about it's just like when women got the vote. It was the middle class women who got the vote. It was far too dangerous to let working class women have the vote. So women got the vote in 1918 if they had property or university degrees or their husbands had property. Now how demeaning is that? But it was because they were afraid of working class, the tide of working class. Then the women would have been the majority of the voters. But of course we've got to make sure it's not just privileged women who are brought on by our campaign for equality. Now I am fully aware that I have privileges which other people don't have. I was different for ages from my colleagues for a lot of reasons. Not just because I was a woman, but because I went to a state school. I was the only one who went to a state school when I arrived in the House of Lords. I had not been in practice at the bar for any length of time. In other ways, the only one like that. I was the only one who specialized in what Helena Kennedy calls poor folks law. The rest of them are not all specialised in rich folks law. So I was different in a lot of different ways. But I was the same because I was white and because I had come to Cambridge. What a privilege that was. When I came to Cambridge, I knew it was a privilege. I bet every woman in this room knew it was a privilege to be here. But I was surrounded by men who thought they were entitled to be here. That's one of the things we still have to go on fighting against. The male sense of entitlement. Sorry, can I say male? See, that's a real difficulty. The men, the masculine sense. Can we say masculine? Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. Because you've all encountered it. And there are far fewer women who have that sense that because I am who I am, where I've been educated, the family I come from, it was always that. I am entitled to be in Cambridge or somewhere else privileged. We have to find ways of countering that. You've got a much bigger role in all of this than either Mary or I have, but we can support you in what we say. Mary? Well, I agree with absolutely everything that has been said. For me, equality is the idea of the age. It is the way in which we give dignity to what we do and the way we approach other people. It's a cast of mind, and that's what's changed in the 21st and 20th century. It's an extremely important idea, and I see diversity as meaning dignity for everybody, whether there are differences of gender, or colour, or religion, or means, or whatever, or ideas. So to me, the diversity you're talking about is simply a natural flow from what we regard as gender equality. So I wish you well in your work. I'm sure it could be done. Let's talk about the men. The role of men in supporting this agenda, gender equality, race equality, genuinely broad diversity and inclusion of the cultures in which we all spend our working days. How do we ensure that we bring the men into this and that they help us and work? How do we collaborate best with men to take the recent Mary Edwards work? Well, I wish I knew the answer to that. It would be very, very helpful to know. The answer may be that you just have to study the way they like to work and try and go with the grain a bit in the sense of getting them on-site and to come with you. There's no point in treating them as enemies in the workplace. Well, they certainly aren't. My experience in the court of appeal, at least where I was very much longer than I've been in the Supreme Court, was that you got to know your colleagues and you knew their strong points and their weak points and you worked with the best points and you gave them the cases you knew that would bring the best points out of them and you worked with them in a way which they liked to be worked with. Some people like to work very clearly on their own. Other people like to be talked into a position and to talk about it more than others. I think you just have to try and put yourselves in their shoes. Do you agree with that, Brenda, working with and putting people into their shoes? Well, I was interpreting your question slightly differently because we all have to remember that we women would not have got anywhere if there hadn't been men who understood our situation and thought that if the world treated them the way the world treated women, they wouldn't like it. So they're better changing. Let's say thank you to all those men who campaigned for women to get the vote, to become lawyers, to get degrees from this university. Because that's important. Another point to make is that feminism is believing in equality, the equality of women and the validity of women's experience. That's how I define feminism. Men can be feminists too and there are lots of them and there are loads of women who aren't. And those are probably the people that we most have to contend with rather than being us. They are in many ways the real problem rather than men. But the other thing, of course, is the point that was made by several people earlier today is that probably the most important thing when you're making your way as a woman in the law is to choose the right partner. And I have been extremely fortunate, I have been married twice, but both of my husbands supported me in my career. My first husband, when I had, I only had one child, I admire greatly Mary who had three, I only had one and I know it gets exponentially more difficult the more you have, but he said, when I said, well I want to go back to work as soon as I can, he said, well I wouldn't be expected to give up my work because we have a child, I don't expect you to. So he was hugely supportive throughout. He also supported me when I became an assistant recorder, tap on shoulder in 1982, academic lawyer long out of practice, he said, yes of course you can. So that second husband also supported me in becoming an assistant recorder and he supported me ever since. So it is important to have the support of men generally and the support of individual men. Last point, there were 11 sitting on that case last week. We all worked together in a hugely collegiate way. The men were supporting us, we were supporting the men. It was a great example of collaboration for which I am hugely grateful those eight men who came with us on the journey. So all three things. Could I develop that a little bit further so thinking about the Supreme Court and the different people there and the gender balance and the like. Do you think that when it comes to the characteristics that make a good judge or barrister that gender matters? Well we talked about this a bit in earlier panels which I thought was because people were asked whether being a woman helped and I have always said I'm sure it was a help in my career to be a woman at a time when people realised there needed to be at least one woman. It was very often at least one woman and so that was a help. But being a woman is also a help because you do bring different experience of life to the business of judging. There's just no doubt about that and we had lots of examples of it talked about earlier on. I was thinking about the immigration and asylum situation. Now Mary and I were, she was in the Court of Appeal and I was in the House of Lords when we had the case of Forna about whether women who faced female genital mutilation in their country of origin were faced a real risk of persecution, everybody agreed it was persecution on account of their membership of a particular social group. And extraordinary intellectual contortions had been gone into by everybody else to say that being a woman who belonged to a tribe in this particular country which practised female genital mutilation was not being a member of a particular social group. How could you do that? How could you begin not to acknowledge that this was being membership of a particular social group? Mary found one in the Court of Appeal. In fact in the Supreme Court we all reached the same conclusion and I like to think that it was because they had a woman in the Supreme Court or it was in the House of Lords that they readily saw what the point was. So you can make a difference by being there and I can give some other examples. Possibly not as obvious as that one where being a woman does make a difference. I'm sure it does and I think it's. But also there are other types of experience that must be important, not just female experience, back to the same problem as what we said before. Yes. There is a difference between being a good barrister and a good judge. Stephen Sedley said that the qualification for being a good barrister was reasoning to a given conclusion. It's obvious isn't it? You get your client's story, business or whatever, you realise what your client wants, you realise what the best thing you can get for your client is and then you work out a way of getting there. Judging should be the opposite of that. Not reasoning from a given conclusion but reasoning from principle and the evidence. Now, when you get to the conclusion that that reasoning leads you to, you've got to do a reality check because it might be absurd or just feel intuitively wrong. But that's where you should start and I have always tried to start even though sometimes one does realise that one's view of the merits does some colour one's judgement. But it's the opposite of the way you think when you're an advocate. So the qualities you might need to be a good judge might not necessarily be the same qualities that you need to be a good advocate. Mary. I entirely agree with that that I also agree that women have qualities which bring a great deal to judging. I could also give cases apart from fauna where I think that having a woman on the panel has made a real difference. It's not just a question of experience so that is really important. It's also a question that women like to work consensually. I hope I'm not being stereotypical in saying that but women like to bring everybody in so it's a different form of leadership. But also they tend to be rather practical in what they try to do and to produce a practical result and a practical solution and method of reasoning one that's really going to be helpful and I think that those qualities really do add something to the overall result. So of course the message is I hope lots of you will go away and think about it as a serious career. When I was appointed and it hadn't actually been announced but I was walking down Middle Temple Lane which is one of the Inns of Court in London I was met by a judge coming the other way and I said to him, he was in the Court of Appeal I've just taken on the job do you think I've done the wrong thing? And the person I was speaking to was Lord Hoffman as he became and he said no, he said absolutely not because when you're counsel you have to do what your client wants but when you get onto the bench you'll be able to do what you think is the right thing and that's really ultimately very satisfying and you keep on acquiring more knowledge and more skills so there we are, I hope that's a good answer. That's a good answer. Are you happy to take questions? I am very conscious of what an immense privilege I'm having sitting here with this opportunity to put questions to Brenda and Mary but I feel that this is such an amazing opportunity that we all have that I should at this point open things out to you for some questions or reflections or reactions to what you've heard I graciously agreed to take those questions so the hands went straight up. I didn't mean to imply in any way that barristers can't change their spots in other words just as the story that Mary has told a very good barrister can become a very good judge they can leap over and I think the reason historically of course barristers have been appointed judges because they were thought to be the top lawyers there weren't legal academics for example until basically the 19th century very few nobody would have thought of appointing public servants as judges so on the whole the top lawyers were the barristers and therefore they were the ones who became the judges there's also I think probably the great British class system at work here it's at work in so many ways it still is it's breaking down but you for so long my husband keeps calling himself a humble attorney he's not humble at all but that's what he always says because you know when I started at the bar a lot of barristers looked down on solicitors it was awful it was embarrassing you know they weren't allowed to have lunch together weren't allowed to do this that and the other a lot of courts when I started sitting and I'm looking at some fellow judges here the circuit judge ate separately from the district judges now the circuit judges were mostly barristers and the district judges were mostly solicitors but this hierarchy that there was in the law and there still is to a certain extent is really powerful that doesn't happen anymore nobody gets any lunch so they all have to take their own sandwiches in so that's a good way of breaking down barris I said what but I don't think that's why it was done so it's all of those reasons basically but don't think I'm not dissing the barrister judges one little bit I'm just saying it's interesting it is a different mindset I'm going to take two questions one here and one over here are comments there is more of a pull up really there is another property admissions process that has set up the barris yes it is it's very hard to control because then the admissions process that's absolutely true and I think that means an awful lot of pressure on the judicial appointments commission to look at their selection methods I think they're reasonably aware of the difficulty but it's not always easy for them to address it and the tradition of you don't get a full time job until you've done a part time job is going to be very difficult to break down very difficult indeed for quite a lot of reasons because there are quite good things about that the same problem arises with I mean I've been banging on for quite some time that one way of diversifying the judiciary is to try and recruit public sector lawyers and private sector lawyers into the judiciary and that is beginning to happen by a trickle because so many good diverse people didn't stay in or even go into independent private practice they've gone into the government legal service the CPS local government magistrates court advisers all of those sorts of roles really good lawyers who often have got a mindset which is very neutral, very impartial speaking truth to power is what government lawyers have to do and advising members of the judiciary is what magistrates court advisers have to do so there are lots of pools we should fish in but it's difficult to fish in them sometimes because of the professional constraints of those pools because the government legal service actually also operates well it's the litigation bit a bit operates on a very similar model to solicitors firms and solicitors firms don't make it easy for people to take part time jobs they should do and there's no reason why they shouldn't they could do it if they really wanted to so we have to try and pressurize them there's also in-house counsel in commercial firms why should they not become judges too but do all of that how do you assess whether they're going to be any good at it so you have to have good assessment tools and that's really hard example of a skeleton argument well why not write a 10 page essay in support of a particular point of view on something or an answer to a particular legal problem not a skeleton argument but it's the same idea I think we'd do it but a skeleton argument is still arguing to a given conclusion which doesn't seem to me to be a good way of testing judicial skills back to point one Christian if I'm sorry I haven't talked you too much yes well done I do use them often obviously I domesticate them I halify them or whatever but the first is democratic legitimacy the courts should be regarded as the people's courts we're there to do justice for everybody the people should be able to go to court and regard them as representing or reflecting society generally not representative in the way that parliamentarians are representative but reflecting it shouldn't be a narrow elite group dictating to the rest of society so democratic legitimacy linking into that the values which the law is there to promote are justice, fairness and equality equality is quite recent but it's there now firmly there and so the bench should reflect those values justice, fairness and equality the third reason was waste of talent all those brilliant women who go into the law in the junior ranks we now got majority in fact law students women majority of people qualifying solicitors are women roughly half and half as baristers waste of talent if we don't get loads of them into the judiciary and the fourth reason is the one we've been talking about sometimes your gender does make a difference I think there are lots of ways in which it makes a difference and sometimes it's just your perception of what's the reality in a particular case sometimes it's just style friendliness smiling it's not a bad thing but sometimes and this is a point that's been made by Kate O'Regan who was on the constitutional court of South Africa your presence stops people saying certain things out loud or if they do you can call them out and a lovely young woman I met at another event earlier this year said she was a student actually at a university that wasn't Oxford or Cambridge but it was the next best thing and she said she was surrounded by the sort of array Henry type young men and her technique was when they said something unthinkingly sexist or racist which they often did she would just smile sweetly and say say that again and they realised that they had said something unacceptable so there are lots of ways in which our presence actually makes a difference I was going to pick up on that point too that I think as I have experienced it that the presence of women in any group when they start to be there in a sufficient mass changes the behaviour of the group completely and that they then focus on the point and it's a more a better exercise altogether as well as taking into account a wider set of considerations if I can just give a frivolous example when I first arrived in the Court of Appeal which was 2000 I had to know the cricket score by the time I went back at 10-2 because the only thing they would be talking about is the cricket or rugga I never got there one of the things I'm really grateful to my husband for he got me interested in rugga that meant when I was in the Court of Appeal I could actually have a topic of conversation with my colleagues so now we can talk about shopping if we feel like it I know there are so many more questions happily after the session and then the wrap up there is a drinks reception outside and Brenda and Mary are both staying for that so there will be more opportunity to ask you questions and I think there might be some selfies required don't do selfies do photos but not selfies no selfies I'm glad I asked that question and I have to dash away briefly to go and dump my bags in my room and then come back so I might not be at the reception for very long apologies can I just say that I really hope that you will go out of this and think it's right to celebrate because I think it is remarkable how much progress has been made in a hundred years and that we should feel positive about that it's been very difficult for a large number of women but then just think of Ginger Rogers and Freda Starr sweeping around the room and she had to do it backwards it's alright for the men and in high heels so on that word of celebration which is of course absolutely right to come back to that I would like to close this part of the afternoon by celebrating the two of you this university is a immensely pride of you perhaps we were immensely pride of the fact that there were seven Cambridge educated members of the Supreme Court we did and this is a cheap shot feel while Oxford can have the politicians and I think I might even speak for the not just for Cambridge but for the country and saying we are so lucky to have you thank you so much I wanted just to say a few words at the end I mean this has been such an amazing afternoon there are so many things that come out too much to think about I think that message of bringing your whole self being authentic was a sort of theme that ran across the entire afternoon and I want to thank all of our speakers for doing exactly that I think the honesty and the openness and the genuwness of everybody who spoke here this afternoon was just palpable and it's wonderful that we can have created that atmosphere in this room just by coming together in this way and the collegiality of it and again I think given everything that's going on out there in the world just the civility and the sense of being part of something together that was here was just so refreshing to see and I think some people personally some people also reminded us of why everything that we've been talking about matters not just for us in terms of gender issues but to live in a country where the rule of law does matter I want to just sing like people spoke very personally of their own personal experience family in terms of when you genuinely are threatened I mean that really does bring it all home to us we had all women panels again coming back to my quality and diversity role I mean you know these days if you see a single gender panel you're supposed to kind of get up and walk out but that's all men all men panels and I think we can feel we've got plenty of plenty of way to go to even up that balance the last thing I wanted just to do and say was to thank the organisers of this event but I think I can do so not being selfish because I'm actually mostly out of the law faculty at the moment but I think we do need to pay tribute to the law faculty for doing this, for bringing us together for having this idea for all of the hard work of so many people that went on behind the scenes and leading up to and today to make it the success it has been this is Brian's last working day or one more working day one more working day as chair of the faculty he will then hand over to Mark Elliott up at the back there Mark you've got a high bar to meet not just sort of today but Brian I do want to take this opportunity to thank you publicly for being chair of the faculty this year your leadership has been great like all of the administrators and everybody who supported this and I want to thank all of you for coming because I think that sense of us all being here together and sharing something really important looking back as Brian said why we have an anniversary or centenary to Mark here but also looking forward to what this wonderful institution this law faculty this university more and more led by its fantastic women is going to do on the launch of this new sort of initiative within the faculty so I think we're going to end by thanking and congratulating all of us it turns out that the very first thing that I just said was wrong which is that she's not the last thing standing between you and the reception I am so I but there are two bases I really do have to cover before closing today's wonderful event the first is and Otis is already to this is to thank the people who are responsible for putting this wonderful event together but I feel I should unpack that a bit because there really has been so much effort put in so please bear with me I'd like to start with our student volunteers they've done a great job of bringing people in bringing people down very very grateful to them for their help today I'd like to thank our speakers I'm not going to name them by names they have as it turned out they've been introduced and they've introduced themselves and you've had ample opportunity to get to know them better but thank you collectively in terms I would like to turn to our faculty we've had active participants today we've had Catherine Barnard and Sarah Worthington have done introducing of panels I think we can all agree that Pippa Rodgerson, Nicky Padfield and Eilish have done wonderful jobs of moderating their respective speakers there's been so much star power today they brought it out and done everything justice say finally to that the catalyst for this were conversations with Stephanie Palmer who suggested that we should be thinking about organizing this event and we're really grateful to her for that I should turn to the Center for Corporate Commercial Law which has provided substantial financial support for today's event Felix Steffick, the center's director deserves credit for this as do Louise Merritt and Pippa Rodgerson who helped to direct a certain aspect of center funding towards this event I should mention Daniel Bates our legal IT teaching and development officer up here who has assisted in various ways he oversees the law faculty website and that capacity has generated valuable internet based publicity for today's event he's also orchestrated as you will have seen the video recording of today's program aspects of which will no doubt be available soon he also helped to install the first 100 years projects banners upstairs so thank you for that I should also return to the first 100 years 100 years project Dana Dennis Smith spoke today and I would like to thank the organizers of that project for allowing us to show their banners but also should thank Slaughter in May because there's a number of sets of these banners and it's Slaughter in May's banners that we've been able to use today Slaughter in May is very good in terms of providing support for the faculty in other ways so I'm delighted to give them a shout in relation to that I should also, I'd like to turn next to Lucy Holmes who's over here Lucy is an events organizer at the Cambridge University Development and Alumni Relations we don't even have to spell that out it's QDAR for us she's provided valuable suggestions and wonderful logistical support because I'm sure most of you know it's alumni the alumni weekend and so they're really on they're really pulling out the stops and we're really grateful for all their help today I want to finish my thanks by mentioning Helen Waring and Claire Gordon Helen is the secretary to the law faculty faculty officers including the chair that's me as such she's been a great help to me during my stint here as chair she's gone above and beyond the call with today's event publishing registrations, email circulations and other logistical details two numerous to mention last but most certainly not least is Claire Gordon Claire works with QDAR with her primary assignment being the faculty's development associate she's done a great job for us in that capacity in a challenging charitable environment her involvement with this event stands out as I think it's fair to say her crowning achievement to date she's played an instrumental role in bringing the program together and I've heard a praise for among many aspects of it but the diversity of the people we've had speaking and Claire has very much taken the lead in relation to that done a wonderful job of thinking of people of recruiting them, bringing them in and in terms of the membership of the people who come and talk today that's all down to Claire indeed it's no exaggeration to say that without Claire this event would not have happened now what I've focused on with my remarks has been the past present and future so we've talked about I've talked about the past the introduction I've just been talking about the present I want to talk about the future today's event provides crystal clear evidence of the outstanding women who study law here in Cambridge now we've been well aware of this at some level but we have done too little to capitalise so this event marks a turning point because what we're going to be doing moving forward we are going to seek to capitalise fully on the wonderful women graduates from the Cambridge Law Faculty and this is the way in which we're making this concrete is by launching Cambridge women in law now what this is is it's going to be a network of supporters for activities oriented around the careers of women legal education, legal issues and the practice of law and we've taken this initial step by again to sign up whether it's old style or whether you do it through the website because what we want you to do is we want to keep you up to date with the activities of Quill, Cambridge women in law I can give you a spoiler alert as to what is going to be the first news item which is that we are going to we're going to launch soon the Quill's advisory board the board will be comprised of a number of faculty members and there will be a number of external members more news soon I anticipate that one of the first items of business for the advisory board will be to consider how to fortify relations with the Cambridge University Society for Women Lawyers or CUSAL which is a student run society now today's been a great event one element that has been not entirely absent but not as full on as it theoretically could have been which would be students and of course students are why as a faculty we are here now the reason for this of course is the timing because we're before term has started but as Quill moves forward what it should be doing is working with CUSAL working together so that they can organize events and work together and have a harmonious relationship between this between Quill and CUSAL so as to fortify CUSAL's operations and in turn Quills as well so that's going to be a crucial thing that Quill will need to be doing going forward and the I guess what I would finish with is just again Eilish has already said it's been a great event congratulations since people have gone more personal than you're used to seeing an academic event so I have spent a year as chair it's been fascinating and and I would say that this indeed has been one of the achievement of which the faculty has been very proud but personally it's been very gratifying to be involved with this event and I do hope that the faculty takes the opportunity that this event is provided in order to capitalize on this and to ensure that both students and graduates Cambridge women that they work together and work together with the faculty in what will be a wonderful joint enterprise and everyone I should stress everyone is welcome to keep going in relation to that journey now I as the final obstacle before the reception I'm finished so that is upstairs and I hope you'll have an opportunity to discuss today's wonderful events it's been great so thanks very much