Perhaps surprisingly given her position as the head of the Young Barristers’ Committee, Nicola Howard says she had never considered a career in law as a student. “At that stage I didn’t even know you could be a lawyer if you hadn’t done law at university,” she says. “And from my family background, I didn’t even think I could afford to train as a lawyer.” For those considering a career in the rarefied environment of the Bar, such uncertainty is hardly unusual.
For much of the 20th century, while profession after profession opened itself up to market forces and widened recruitment, the Bar remained, outwardly at least, a bastion of traditionalism. Even the most apparently archaic of traditions such as ‘dining’ – attending a set number of dinners in your elected Inn as a condition of qualification – and the wearing of wigs in court have been almost reverently defended.
