The career structure that most professionals inhabit — employment, teams, managed workloads — is largely absent from the world of barristers. For those who practise at the self-employed Bar, independence is not a perk but a defining condition of the work. Emily Windsor, a chancery barrister who has also served as a Judge, has examined that structure with the candour of someone who has lived it for decades.
Windsor’s chancery practice covers the full cycle of legal work: advising clients, building cases, and appearing in court to argue them. The client base she works with is notably varied — agricultural businesses and household-name companies sit alongside one another on her desk — and she finds that variety genuinely engaging. What connects every matter is the same intellectual demand: think clearly about a complex problem and find the most useful path through it.
The professional structure underpinning that work is self-employment within a set of Chambers. Windsor describes this arrangement as offering a meaningful combination of independence and community. She operates her own practice, organises her own time, and takes personal responsibility for the outcomes she delivers. Alongside that, Chambers provides a working environment with real social and professional substance: colleagues to consult, support when things are difficult, and the kind of human texture that makes a working life sustainable.
But Windsor does not soften the demands that the self-employed model places on those who choose it. Most barristers carry their cases alone. There is no team to share the weight of a difficult matter. The result is a level of personal accountability that Windsor experiences as constant — she thinks about her clients outside working hours, and acknowledges that the responsibility that comes with independent practice does weigh on her at times.
Technology has also changed what self-employment can look like in practice. Legal resources that previously required physical access to a library are now available from a laptop at home, at any hour. Working remotely for extended periods is now genuinely viable for a practitioner who needs to. Windsor regards this as a meaningful development — particularly for anyone managing responsibilities outside their professional life.
The Bar’s relationship with professional seniority is also worth noting. Windsor observes that barristers in their sixties and seventies are often among the most respected and sought-after practitioners in their fields. Age and experience accumulate into authority rather than obsolescence — a dynamic that stands in meaningful contrast to sectors where longevity is treated as a cost rather than an asset.
Windsor herself found, when the subject of retirement came up, that she had no strong inclination to pursue it. Court still gives her energy. Her clients continue to interest her. The work remains rewarding. Her assessment: a happy, fulfilling career, and one she would recommend.