Baroness Hallett of Rye

Heather Hallett’s dynamic and successful curriculum vitae is inspiring, I wish her school teachers could read this article!

Heather Hallett outside of the Royal Courts of Justice, in London.

How were your school years?

Heather.  My parents came from modest backgrounds; my father was a police officer on the beat in Hampshire. I was born into a terraced house in Eastleigh. The house backed onto the marshalling yards. My mother claimed that every time she washed and put the nappies on the washing line, which you had to do in those days, they got covered in soot from the engines.

My father was very bright and ambitious. He was regularly promoted and that meant moving from one police house to another. So I had to move schools every year or two, which was very difficult. Each school seemed to have a different curriculum and I would arrive at my new school to find that, whereas I had not been due to start French till I was 13 years of age; my new class had been learning French from about 11. I was, therefore, always running to catch up and always the new girl in the wrong colour uniform.

I felt like the child on the outside, because all the others had formed their friendship groups before I arrived. No sooner had my brother and I started to acquire friends, my father would come home with excellent news (as far as he was concerned) he had been promoted again, and we were on the move. This way of life meant that we became a strong family unit. Most women had to suppress any thoughts they may have had about a career and my father was often away on career-enhancing courses. That left my mother, my brother, and I together and we were very close.

I was also very close to my father; he was always very supportive. He believed in equal opportunities for women. I was fortunate that I had this strong family unit despite the disruptive background; if you have a strong family unit it provides you with an excellent base to take on the world.

When I was 15, I had one teacher who saw something in me, my form teacher, Dr Nankivell. She said that she thought I might have potential and I should study Latin O-level because I might get into a ‘respectable’ university if I did. She spoke to my parents, obviously, and my parents encouraged me. Their attitude was do what you think you can, don’t set your sights too low. That made me pretty determined and possibly stubborn.

“I think stubbornness plays a large part in my life; if somebody tells me that I can’t do something, I think I will give it a go; I don’t always succeed, but I’m going to give it my very best shot.”

By the age of 17, I had already attended three grammar schools, and I had just started my first year of A-levels when my father got another promotion, this time to Kent. My parents ummed, and ahed then decided a fourth grammar school within five years was a bit disruptive, so, at the age of 17, I went into digs in Hampshire and discovered newfound freedom. I probably didn’t pay as much attention to my teachers as I did to boys and when it came to advising me on my career path, my then teachers decided I wasn’t university material. They told me if I were lucky, I could go to a teacher training college to become a domestic science teacher; I think that is now called home economics.

When they said I wasn’t university material, I didn’t accept it and I fancied the idea of becoming a lawyer. I decided I would apply to Oxford (about which I knew nothing but I had found there was a college called St Hugh’s and my father’s first name was Hugh). St Hugh’s didn’t have a law don or law department and they used the don from Lady Margaret Hall to interview me. She liked the idea of taking in grammar school girls to St Hugh’s and the privately educated to Lady Margaret Hall.

Getting into Oxford changed my life. I had come from this sheltered upbringing and I had never met anybody obviously different from myself. I began to realise there’s a whole wide world out there, although I should say that most of the students around me were then privately educated. They had enjoyed a broader and more classical education than mine and for the most part, seemed to have greater confidence than I. I was fortunate that instead of getting a chip on my shoulder because I am state-educated, I decided if they were confident, why shouldn’t I be? At 17, 18-year-old, the Bar sounded glamorous, and I decided to go for it.

On the day I was called to the Bar, my father told me that he had always wanted to be a barrister. What discipline and control he had had not to tell his daughter she was pursuing his dream until it was a reality!

Like your father and his many promotions, what are the rungs on the ladder of your career?

Heather.  First, you’ve got to find a place to do your pupillage; you can’t qualify as a barrister who wants to practice until you get pupillage. In those days, it was about connections and contacts, and that usually meant a private education or having a degree from a so-called decent university. Once I had a law degree from Oxford that opened some doors. My father, as assistant chief constable, had to decide which people could have firearms certificates. When he turned a person down, and they appealed, he had to justify his decision in court, he met a barrister who represented the police, they got chatting, and I ended up as a pupil in those chambers.

If you want to practice in chambers, the second stage is to be taken on as a tenant in those chambers. Tenants are a group of barristers who are all self-employed, who share expenses and may return cases to each other that they cannot do but otherwise, they’re not linked.

In 1972, many clerks and senior lawyers expected a young woman to have children and leave the profession. Some openly declared there was no point to taking on a woman who was bound to leave them just as her practice was taking off. Not many women had successfully combined practice with family life by then. Fortunately, my head of chambers genuinely believed in equality of opportunity, and he had the power to say: “I’m giving you a place in chambers”. There were no applications, no interviews, no proper process, but it worked in my favour. It has all changed now.

The next stage is getting taken seriously by the clerks who manage your career. They persuade solicitors to brief you and they in turn needed persuading that women were worth supporting. There was a great deal of overt prejudice. Many women like me just kept our heads down, did whatever work came our way, and tried to prove we were worthy of the chance. Looking back, I wish I had been more open in challenging some of the discrimination and harassment but I feared it would affect my career. In recent years I have spent a great deal of time supporting others like me who have come from non-traditional backgrounds to be able to challenge discrimination and still thrive in the law.

I had two children in my early thirties, continued working after short periods of maternity leave and my practice took off. I became a QC at the age 39, which was relatively young. However, I shall not forget one senior judge involved in the process who took delight in informing me that “we were told we had to have a woman. We thought you were the least worst option.” Charming!

I can’t tell you how proud my parents were, they had come from nowhere. My father’s father was a caretaker, my mother’s father was a chauffeur, so this was big news. I knew then that was my launchpad. I used to hear barristers complaining about the system, and I decided to try and help improve things. As a QC, I got involved in Bar negotiations with the government and judges about the system. I became the leader of the South Eastern Circuit (one of 6 circuits across England and Wales) trying to hone my skills of leadership and management. I took a particular interest in ethics and discipline.

Next, I stood for election as Chair of the Bar; no woman had ever done it; in fact, no woman had been a leader of the South East Circuit either. When my election was announced, it was such big news in those days, I was on the front page of The Times. That was extraordinary; suddenly, to be on the cover of a national newspaper.

In 1999, I got a call from the Lord Chancellor, inviting me to become a high court judge, no interview, no application, at that time.

How has the culture changed over the years?

Heather. The culture has changed massively over the years. Initially, it was like a privately educated boys club. As the decades have passed, I have become increasingly proud of the legal profession and the judiciary. For the most part, they have tried hard to promote equal opportunities and eradicate discrimination. I am not saying things are perfect, far from it, but they have moved on in leaps and bounds. Institutions such as the Judiciary, the Inns of Court, The Law Society, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives run programmes designed to encourage people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, different racial and religious backgrounds to come into the Law and work hard to remove not only overt discrimination but unconscious bias as well.

When I first went to the high court, there were very few female high court judges and none wore trousers as far as I knew. I preferred to wear trousers in court because the old furniture ruined one’s tights. When I arrived in The Royal Courts of Justice and decided I was going to wear trousers there too, many people expressed surprise. One senior female judge came up to me and said: “Heather, you’re wearing trousers!” I waited for the reprimand but she added: “ Do you think I could too?” Yes, of course. By the time I left, there were corridors full of female judges doing an excellent job and no one daring to comment on their dress code, I am delighted to say.

Is there a process to a case or an inquiry that you go through, for example 7/7?

Heather. 7/7 was an inquest because 52 innocent people lost their lives. It was an inquest into the circumstances of their death.

A major challenge with the 7/7 inquest was that many years had passed since the bombings before it was set up. Many bereaved families were rightly upset that nobody had been appointed to look into what had happened, to determine whether the bombings could have been stopped or lives saved if the emergency response had been different. So getting their trust and confidence was the first task, without losing the other people’s confidence, whose conduct was under scrutiny, such as the security services responsible for the intelligence gathering and the emergency responders.

During the inquest hearings, maintaining one’s composure as a coroner can be very difficult. The evidence can be so harrowing for example hearing a bereaved parent describing their child and their loss or hearing from an emergency responder or survivor describe the aftermath of the bombs going off. Any lawyer should try to be a professional at all times, but there comes a time when you are pushed to your emotional limit.

“I was taught a trick by a lawyer/vicar; he said if you are finding it hard to keep your composure, stick your nails into the palm of your hand and cause pain. The pain helps to stop you crying. On one occasion, I came out of a 7/7 hearing, I’d stuck my nails so far into my hand that I had caused bleeding.”

The stories of the survivors were also extraordinary; for example, the woman who lost half her body weight and after convalescence trained for the Paralympic Games and walked into my courtroom unaided. She showed such courage and determination. It was humbling. Then there was the man in a passing train. His train stopped and could see into the bombed compartments. Goodness knows how, but with other passengers, he managed to break the door of his tube train, got through it and across what was still an electrified rail, into the bombed carriage through the bombed windows, and made his way down to the bomb crater using the overhanging straps. When I asked him why he’d done it, why he’d been so brave? He said simply: “well, I once went on a first aid course, I thought I could help”. In the most appalling circumstances, the human spirit can triumph.

Were you in London the day of the 7/7 bombings?

Heather. Yes, my husband and I were on a tube train, we were told that there was a power outage, and we were forced to get off. You could not use your mobile phone because the networks were overloaded. Eventually, I found a telephone box and called one of my sons and told him we were safe, had at last found a bus, and were about to get on it. He had just heard about a bomb on a bus; I think this was the first time in his life that he’d sworn at his mother. Forgive my language but in panic, he shouted: “Get the F’-off the bus immediately.”

People often say that they are looking for closure from a court case. Can closure be achieved? Does it exist? Or is this a carryover from fiction?

Heather. Court cases are about trying to do justice, sometimes attributing responsibility, but not always. There are people, something dreadful happens to them, and they want somebody held accountable or responsible. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen; terrible things can happen without somebody being negligent or criminal.

But if someone has been negligent or criminal or if there has been a full and fair investigation of events, there are occasions when the legal process can deliver closure. I hope that some of the bereaved families got some closure after the 7/7 inquests and I know of many victims of crime who found some comfort in the conviction and sentence of the perpetrator.

How do you switch off from work?

Heather. Walking the dog, preferably out by the beach. Reading. Watching television and listening to the radio. I confess that I am also addicted to certain games on my iPad. I started with Tetris years ago; I’ve been known to play Candy Crush. I’m trying to limit my screen time. Killer Sudoku, I am pretty good at those, I think. I can’t sit still and do nothing; if I’m watching Endeavour on TV, I’ve got to sit on my hands to stop myself from playing on the iPad.

We moved to Rye from Wimbledon in 2008; I have always loved the beach and the sea; I find that I can switch off walking on the beach here, whatever the weather, far better than I did walking on Wimbledon Common. There is just something about the sea and the wildness of the coast here. We love it.