The Secret Barrister
Published by Picador
Hardcover: From £16.99
September 2020
ISBN 978-1529009941
The latest offering from The Secret Barrister—a devastating analysis of the gulf between what we think we know and the reality of how our justice system works— couldn’t be more timely.
Only recently, Boris Johnson has been citing ‘lefty lawyers’ as public enemy number one when it comes to the fair administration of justice in this country, sounding a dog whistle to the media and public alike and diverting attention from the ineptitude of politicians. (And the depressing thing about it, is that it works.)
Page after page of The Secret Barrister’s much anticipated second book presents eye-watering examples of misrepresentations about the law, the courts and the people who work in them. It cites flagrant inaccuracies, many of them deliberate, which fundamentally undermine trust in the entire process.
The problem, as the book points out, is that most people in this country think that the legal system is there for someone else. We will