Lady Hale’s pupil-master told her he didn’t approve of women at the Bar because ‘they don’t know how to fight’ and are ‘either too stubborn or too yielding’, she has revealed in a film on her life.
The barrister, whose wife was a doctor, told Lady Hale, now President of the Supreme Court, that medicine is a caring profession and women should be carers, but the Bar is a ‘fighting profession’ where practitioners have to have the judgement to know ‘what to fight, how to fight and what to settle’.
She recalls: ‘He was wrong about the stereotyping of women but he was right about the Bar.’
The film, which was sponsored by LexisNexis and launched last week in the Supreme Court, was made as part of the First 100 Years project, which tells the story of women in law.
Lady Hale said the ‘proudest day’ of her entire professional life was when she was sworn in as ‘the first and, regrettably, only woman ever’ Law Lord at the House of Lords.
