Published in Counsel — The Magazine of the Bar of England and Wales, 8 September 2025.

What can we as individual barristers, and as members of chambers, do to prevent, protect and prosecute violence against women and girls? It is beyond urgent that we answer this question resoundingly and effectively.

Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person.” The fight against gender-based violence begins in our own chambers, in our own courts, in our own professional practices.

Individual barristers and allies continue their inspirational and vital efforts to challenge how VAWG is dealt with by the justice systems. But we can and must ask ourselves: what more can we do? The piece explores concrete actions barristers can take — from scrutinising our own understanding of violence in its many forms, to the institutional commitments that chambers can make — arguing that the professional and the personal are inseparable when it comes to justice for women and girls.

Read the full article in Counsel Magazine →