Doing so can shift a barrister’s focus, I think, away from judgment and towards a Taoist acceptance of The Way Things Are.īut that isn’t what the Secret Barrister is talking about. In my experience, this is true: the human moral compass - a motley collection of powerful emotional heuristics - did not evolve to navigate the business of prosecuting and defending alleged rapists and murderers. Observing that his “new creed” is now “the dominant strain of ideology” in the profession, he suggests that “there is something that this job does”. Nothing But The Truth - his third book, and an autobiography of sorts - tells the story of a moral awakening. (“I’M GOING TO BE A FUCKING BARRISTER!” he screams in “uncontrollable hysteria” when his pupillage offer lands.) And, over the course of his early years in practice, he sees the light. An “ardent Daily Mail reader” at university, we are told that “soft sentences infused me with fury”. But the big reveal in his new book is that he, too, was once a sinner.

You’re welcome.” Legal Twitter’s centrist bellwether The Secret Barrister heard your petit bourgeois whining about criminals being given nothing more than a slap on the wrist and is making noises on your lawn.Īfter educating the ignorant and correcting the mendacious on inefficiencies and unfairnesses in the Criminal Justice system these last several years, he now has two bestsellers and half a million Twitter followers to his name. “ Actually the judge’s analysis of the applicable guidelines is wholly unimpeachable.

Secret barrister nothing but the truth