Taryn Lee can remember her first contact with a barrister. Her parents, who had a pub on the seafront in Cleethorpes, had a dispute over the premises, where they ran a cabaret nightclub.

“I was 14 and I’d decided from about the age of 8 – probably sitting watching too much Crown Court on the telly – that this was what I wanted to do: wear a wig, stand in court and defend people.

 

 

“The barrister who came to see us was Jonathan Brock. My father told him I wanted to be a barrister and he had that look on his face which I now recognise so well – a nice smile, but as if to say: ‘I’ve heard that lots of times before.’ ” Brock forgot a pair of gloves, which her father duly dispatched. “In return, he sent me a book – Glanville Williams’ s Learning the Law, saying: ‘This is for your legal daughter – follow your dreams.’ ” She did. Now 40, Ms Lee is a barrister in chambers at 37 Park Square, Leeds, specialising in family law. Married to “the boy next door”, a friend who used to play with her outside the pub and is now a fish merchant in Grimsby, she’s combined a successful career with a family life. The couple have two children, a girl, 12, and a boy, 8. Working close to her roots made that possible: “I’ve only been able to manage it because my sister was our nanny and we have family near by.”

 

Ms Lee is a prime example of the changing world of the Bar. State-educated, she read business law at Huddersfield Polytechnic. “I’ve not come from the traditional route [public school, Oxbridge], but people think the Bar is very elite and upper class – it’s not like that at all, now.”

 

Her parents told her and her siblings: “You can achieve anything if you’re prepared to put in the work.” She went to the Inns of Court School of Law in London. After initial funding problems (the bank manager told her to go home), her grant came through. Those were the days when local authorities would pay: now people have to rely on scholarships and bursaries.

 

Bar school was a setback. “Some of them acted as though they were already QCs and I thought them a bit snobbish. I didn’t enjoy it. One, who became a friend, said: ‘Do you mean laugh?’ – when I had said ‘laff’. But it was probably my insecurity, as much as anything else.”

The experience put her off and instead of the Bar she took a traineeship with a solicitors’ firm, Langleys, in Lincoln. Her time there was “fantastic”: she had her own cases and was briefing barristers herself.

 

Yet it made her realise both that law was her chosen career and that she wanted to be at the Bar, with the freedom of being self-employed. “Sitting in an office can be quite stressful and I would get a bit fidgety.” The firm was supportive and said that she could come back if she changed her mind. “That gave me the confidence to succeed.” So she did her pupillage (training), six months each in different chambers but both involving some family work. “I had studied business law thinking I’d be an entertainment lawyer, but at Langleys I realised I really loved family law. When you are young and green, you don’t know what you want.”

 

With her then husband-to-be based in Grimsby, she moved to a chambers outside London – settling in Leeds. Doing family work, with, for example, child abuse cases, not only means long hours – evenings, weekends – but also harrowing cases. “Sometimes I come in and give my children an extra long hug and my daughter will say: ‘Are you doing a very hard case, Mummy?’ ” The financial rewards are not the commercial “fat cat” annual earnings: a junior family barrister may start on £20,000 and perhaps reach £100,000 before becoming a QC – but only by mixing legal aid and privately paid work. And these are gross figures: half goes to chambers overheads, VAT and other self-employed costs.

 

But the main reward, she says, is the work itself. “To see someone smile and say ‘thank you’ – even if you don’t always get the result you wanted but knowing you did a good job, mastered the facts of their case and helped someone at a difficult time is a very uplifting thing to do.”

What it takes

 

Qualifications: An undergraduate 2.2 degree. If this is not in law, you must do a one-year qualifying course leading to the postgraduate diploma in law

 

Training: A one-year skill-based Bar Vocational Course; followed by one year’s training in chambers. Competition is fierce, with many more graduates than places

 

Attributes: Excellent written and verbal skills; ability to cope under pressure and work hard under tight deadlines; tenacity, insight and integrity, commitment and a steely determination. Above all, sheer stamina, physical and emotional, to cope with the work, clients and opponents in court

 

Earnings: The minimum for pupils is £10,000 a year, but the top commercial sets pay pupils up to £42,500. Family barristers at the top can earn £80,000 to £100,000 a year – but only half reaches their pockets after chambers overheads, tax and expenses

 

Working Life: Long hours, including evenings and weekends. The upside is the freedom of being a self-employed specialist advocate, answerable only to the client; a huge diversity of work.

 

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