Mrs Bailey began by likening the law to teaching in that it is very much a vocation; that the rewards as such are intrinsic to the work itself (plus the odd Aston Martin...). She herself qualified as a lawyer and joined the Bar whilst the whole profession was gripped by blatant sex discrimination. As a pupil in her first chambers we heard how she was treated by the clerk with blatant disrespect, being referred to as 'Sir' in a clear attempt to belittle and demoralize her. But as we learnt later, working amid such chauvinism gave Jane Bailey a resilience which proved invaluable when doing battle in the Crown Court cross-examining various police officers.
The beginning of her career seemed to be spent dealing with a variety of pretty sordid sex offence cases before she moved to the Essex Street set of chambers. Here Mrs Bailey worked on more white-collar crime cases, including the Maxwell brothers pension fraud case as well cases involving malpractice by the medical profession.
Many of us were curious to know 'How can you represent someone you know is guilty?' and fortunately Jane Bailey had already prepared an answer to this question. 'As a barrister your job is to defend the accused however suspicious you may be; you do not 'know' the accused is guilty unless he tells you, in which case a barrister should not represent them. It is the job of the jury to decide on the guilt or innocence of an accused, not the barristers or Judge.'
Many of those present at Jane Bailey's lecture were students, from St Catherine's and other schools too; you cannot help but feel that many of them will now be considering a career at the Bar.