“Most days I am not an advocate I’m a firefighter,…” They are informative, interesting and affecting. Their vignettes reveal confusion, negligence, ego’s, corruption, exploitation, stress and exhaustion barely tempered by hard won victories. For criminal barristers, hours of work have notably increased while earnings are stagnant, contributing to a high attrition rate. Decades of funding cuts to the courts and related services including Legal Aid, CPS and the police increase the pressures.
The Secret Barrister presents a system in crisis, and all parties involved in the judicial system are suffering. “If I were a victim of crime, or accused of a crime, this is the very last place I would want my case to be tried.”Īs promised there are stories of crime, guilt and the loss of innocence, but they reference not just their clients, but themselves and their colleagues.
For The Secret Barrister the period exposes the discrepancy between theory and practice, and challenges many of their long held beliefs about guilt, innocence, punishment and justice. It’s under the supervision of pupillage in court that students begin their career as a barrister, the first six months is spent largely observing their pupil master and assisting with paperwork. “The verdict you seek from the jury is, after all, ‘not guilty’, not ‘innocent’.” They make several interesting observations, one of which is the way the current system results in a lack of diversity, among criminal barristers particularly, which disadvantages their clients. It’s a long, expensive process steeped in tradition, pageantry, and nepotism, and The Secret Barrister describes it with a mix of humour, contempt, and nostalgia. The first quarter or so of the book explains how a person becomes eligible to serve at the Bar, from studying law at university, to competing for a place at Bar school, and then for pupillage (a kind of internship). “Four in five of you will never practise as barristers.”
Largely presented chronologically, they expose the weaknesses and strengths of the process, and the need for change to better support the legal profession to serve their clients, with their particular witty irreverence. In Nothing But the Truth, The Secret Barrister shares their journey through the UK system to gain their qualifications and their early experiences of working as a criminal barrister. Having read and enjoyed Fake Law: The Truth about Justice in an Age of Lies defending judicial independence, penned by The Secret Barrister, I was curious about their new release, Nothing But The Truth: Stories of Crime, Guilt and the Loss of Innocence. Status: Read July 2022 courtesy PanMacmillan Australia Published: 10th May 2022, Pan Macmillian Australia Title: Nothing But The Truth: Stories of Crime, Guilt and the Loss of Innocence
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