Justice often feels distant until it brushes our lives, yet it quietly structures every choice the courts make, and every hour the people inside them endure. This conversation with criminal defence barrister Kate Kelleher and CBA communications lead James Rosseter pulls the curtain on a profession that balances solemn duty with shrinking margins. They describe the slow unravelling of camaraderie since the pandemic, the pressure of late emails that move trials overnight, and the emotional residue of violent cases that follows them home. Listeners step into the robing rooms and corridors where advocacy is forged, and where, increasingly, there’s no time to talk, learn, or even eat. The result is a justice workforce running hot, fuelled by purpose and, too often, chocolate.
The first fault line is isolation. Chambers used to be a learning commons where juniors absorbed craft through gentle critique and shared war stories. Today, with fewer barristers in the “engine room” years and chambers downsizing to cut costs, those soft channels of feedback have thinned. Judges’ dinners once turned adversarial heat into mutual understanding, smoothing future hearings and refining tone. Without those touchpoints, advocates lose peer review in real time; small mistakes compound, confidence dips, and professional development migrates to WhatsApp threads that can’t capture the nuance of a jury’s mood or a judge’s temperament. Expertise survives, but it grows in silos, not circles.
Then there is disclosure. The statutory duty to share unused material exists to stop miscarriages like the Guildford Four, yet Kate and James recount cases derailed because phone downloads surfaced mid-trial or simple checks were never done. One young defendant waited years through aborted listings before a basic evidential exercise—promised but not completed—led the Crown to offer no evidence. Rising failures to disclose are not just statistics; they translate into wasted listings, retraumatised complainants, anxious defendants, and juries asked to wait while counsel hunts a treasury tag. Understaffed teams, broken equipment, and overloaded diaries turn legal safeguards into practical obstacles. Defence and prosecution barristers arrive asking the same question: are we sure we have everything?
Working conditions sound trivial until they shape outcomes. Courts without cafés force barristers to queue with jurors or skip meals, compressing time for client conferences and collaboration. A one-hour sentencing can’t be accommodated and slides weeks, separating clients from the counsel who knows their story. These delays hurt public confidence, but more critically, they bruise people who need closure, rehabilitation pathways, or acquittals recorded. The pre-trial preparation hearing becomes, as Kate quips, the “pressure to plead hearing,” where early plea discounts shrink even when duty solicitors juggle stacks of files and disclosure is incomplete. Administrative incentives clash with moral certainty, and the system asks defendants to choose speed over scrutiny.
The emotional toll is constant and complex. Flashbacks intrude at bedtime; nightmares replace rest with dread about being unable to protect one’s child in a police station. The profession has edged away from wine to ward off fatigue and safeguard concentration, but the anxiety persists. Still, love for the craft remains. Barristers stay because they want someone like them at the court door when a frightened teenager arrives, because they know the difference between legal guilt and religious guilt, and because they believe that proof beyond reasonable doubt is not a slogan but a shield. Their humour—about vending machines, salted caramel chocolate oranges, and gown-clad dashes across the road—keeps the edges soft when the stakes are hard.
Finally, the public narrative is thinner as local court reporting declines. Without routine, accurate accounts of everyday hearings, the system appears only at its loudest: sensational trials, moral panics, or high-profile acquittals. That silence hides the quiet competence and the daily frictions where justice either breathes or suffocates. Kate and James call for basic investments—time, people, stationery, food, spaces to talk—and for cultural humility about what we do not see from the gallery. Justice works best when it is boring, careful, and human; to get there, the bar needs room to learn together, the CPS needs staff to disclose on time, and courts need to treat working conditions as part of due process. The law is a structure, but it is powered by people. When we care for them, we care for fairness itself.
