We Set the Bar: Fighting for Equality, Empowerment and Change Within the Legal Profession

The legal profession has a long-standing reputation for being an ’Old Boys’ Club’ with both unequal access and progression within it. In recent years, this has begun to be acknowledged, but much more needs to be done to overturn the culture of power and privilege that perpetuates it.

In her trademark outspoken style, Jo Delahunty Q.C. shines a light on these problems - from discrimination and disadvantage in entering the Bar, to toxic work practices, sexual harassment, judicial bullying and more. Jo shows how they impact most negatively on women and minorities, resulting in the loss of diversity from, and underrepresentation in, the senior Bar and judiciary. Finally, using her passion for legal aid work with the most vulnerable in society, she identifies what can be done to make changes to the Bar for the better.

Drawing on her own story and those of others to expose the highs and lows of a life in the law, this book is a challenge to the Bar as it stands and a call to action for the next generation of change-makers. Every professional can make a difference: this book reveals how.

Jo Delahunty Q.C. is Emeritus Gresham Professor of Law, at Gresham College, London. and is one of the UK’s leading barristers specialising in child protection law and contentious cases. As a single parent from a working-class family and its first member to go to university, she has carved out her own path, defying and challenging the script for class and gender to rise to the heights within the legal profession. She is an Ambassador for Bridging the Bar and Patron of the Association of Women Barristers and informal mentor to many at the Bar She has spent her career challenging preconceptions of what it is to be a barrister through her actions, achievements, public speaking and writing, including public lectures covering topics including becoming a barrister, the reality of being a legal aid lawyer, and shining a light on issues of diversity, equality and fairness in the family justice system. Outspoken about the use and abuse of power at the Bar, she now uses her position as a Silk to speak out.