Francesca Ruddy

Oscar Wilde opined that life imitates art and so it was that Francesca Ruddy was plunged into ‘the thick of it’ last September, as UK ministers were left befuddled by the intervention of a Scottish court in Westminster’s affairs – the Lord President having declared prorogation to be “unlawful”.

She recalled: “Our time as JAs started with a bang. The normal month of settling in in September was disrupted by the prorogation appeals, which saw the justices being hauled back early from their holidays and from across the globe for what was a massive hearing and – leaving aside the fascinating legal questions – an incredible spectacle.”

Glasgow University graduate Francesca, who is JA to Lord Hodge, said there were news crews set up all around Parliament Square and that millions of people around the world were tuning in to the court’s live stream – “although they don’t seem to follow all the tax appeals at the moment with quite such excitement”.

As social media went wild with speculation and all eyes were on the Supreme Court, Francesca’s rightly proud mum kept sending her “zoomed in shots of me sitting behind Lady Hale” – just in case she had forgotten where she was.

The judicial assistantship programme gives qualified lawyers the chance to work in the UK’s apex court alongside the country’s most senior judges. It is a rare opportunity, similar to America’s hallowed clerkship scheme and bound to attain similar prestige. JAs act as aides to the justices – preparing press summaries, writing bench memos and drafting speeches. But the role is more than the sum of its administrative parts.

Those who are accepted find themselves in what must be, initially at least, a surreal dialectic with members of probably the most respected judiciary in the world. The cases that come before the court are, necessarily, “complex, challenging and important”, Francesca said. Candidates for the role are of the highest standard and competition is fierce. But it is worth its weight in career capital.

Rachel Barrett

Rachel Barrett, who studied history at the School of Oriental and African Studies before converting to law, is a barrister at Cloisters in London. She was JA to Lords Hodge and Wilson in 2014-15. Comparing the year she spent in practice – her first at the bar – to the year following her time as a JA, she said the “distinction between the two was quite stark”.

As a baby barrister she experienced the usual impostor syndrome and second-guessing of the novice – but emerged from the judicial assistantship having begun to understand law on the scale of the system and not just the rule; having begun to develop legal intuition.

“I got used to arguing with the likes of Lord Sumption, having the opportunity to develop my ways of thinking and being tested by people who are just so intelligent that I felt my confidence and ability to do the job had radically increased by the time I went back.”

She said: “That understanding has meant that I have found law so much more interesting, so much more enjoyable, and so much more accessible ever since.

“When I get a problem in a case that seems novel or difficult to tackle, I’ve got all these tools in my toolkit to approach it with. It was just something that I wasn’t able to do before, but that I’ve been able to do since.”

The judicial assistantship “accelerated my career by some years”, she said. The latest edition of Chambers and Partners describes Rachel as being “absolutely brilliant”.

Francesca, who has a broad commercial practice at Herbert Smith Freehills in London, said that her decision to apply for the JA role prompted a “few raised eyebrows” as people think the court is concerned almost entirely with big constitutional cases.

She said, however, that the court’s workload is like “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans” as JAs experience not only the variety of work at the court, but also the work of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

And the job is not just for barristers and advocates.

The JA said: “I’m a solicitor and not many solicitors would consider necessarily going down the judicial assistantship route because it’s often seen as something that’s the preserve of a barrister, but that’s absolutely not the case. In fact, in our current intake of 11, there are six of us who are current or ex-solicitors.”

Highlights of Francesca’s year so far include justices’ birthdays, given that a rivalry has arisen over who has the best birthday cake; “making tea with Lord Kitchin – in the kitchen”; being a member of the Can’t Sing Choir and “singing various Yorkshire-based odes to Lady Hale at the end of her term”.

And Francesca has borne witness to some “fascinating appeals”, including a case brought by Russia seeking repayment of a $3 billion loan to Ukraine. But since she is particularly fond of tax law, her “most interesting case so far” has been a tax appeal “dealing with whether an exception to the general limitation periods of the Limitation Act applies to mistakes of law”.

“It doesn’t sound interesting, but you need to trust me, it was really quite good,” she said – exemplifying why she got the job.

Applications for the JA role are now open. Applicants from Scotland and Northern Ireland are encouraged to apply.