England: Judicial bullying prompting female barristers to leave profession

The head of the criminal bar has highlighted incidents of judges belittling women advocates and attributes this to the judges being men, The Times reports.

An anonymous female barrister told the Criminal Bar Association: “I don’t think I have ever been shouted at like I was by that judge … completely unacceptable. He acted like a toddler.”

She said she was now leaving the bar because of bullying.

Another young woman barrister told the association she was “so sick of … being treated as totally worthless” by judges.

Chairman of the association, Chris Henley QC, one barrister who was the “mother of very young children who has worked herself so hard into the ground, that when she finally took a day off and sought help, her GP immediately called for an ambulance”.

She feared the judge would not grant an adjournment.

“In no other job would I have worked. The hearing got done effectively. Therefore me not calling in sick — which I should have — saved a huge cost of court time, and money in rearranging a hearing,” she said.

When she eventually saw a GP a few days later the doctor “immediately called me an ambulance to hospital, looking me in the eye telling me I’d left it far too long and was now quite acutely ill, with a severe chest infection which had caused my usually mild asthma to flare up so I could not breathe”.

Mr Henley said he had “spoken to heads of crime teams at chambers all over the country … Talented women are leaving criminal practice. The pattern is the same everywhere. There is a crisis.”

In his weekly message to members he said that “even the most successful junior women increasingly have had enough. They can get easier, better paid jobs elsewhere, where they will be supported, be treated with respect and where the conditions are flexible and compatible with family life”.