The Inns of Court Alliance for Women

Introduction

Welcome to another wonderful ICAW Garden Party. Looking around we definitely have the most colourful stylish and uplifting Garden Party at the Bar each year. Thank you all for coming and making this event so wonderful.

The ICAW has been busy this year. Last autumn we had a lively and interesting panel discussion about Navigating Parenting. The discussion focused on being at the Bar and being a parent at all stages of parenthood, from birth into teenage and university years and including various routes to parenthood.

At that event and more generally ICAW has been proud to support the publication of the amazing book Baby at the Bar by Emma-Louise Fenelon and Emma Price. The book is a deep dive into the realities of parenthood at the Bar for good and ill. It’s a very real look at the topic drawing on the experiences of and solutions found by 100s of barristers who contributed to Emma and Emma’s research. A shining example of proactive collaboration. I can’t recommend it enough as a book that is intended to be your companion on dark lonely nights but also to inform and encourage at various points along the way.

In the spring we had another panel discussion on Harassment and Bullying at the Bar. In true ICAW style there were very frank exchanges about real incidents and their impacts, and helpful discussions about how to navigate them in the moment as well as addressing them in the longer term.

Can I also give a plug for ICAW’s autumn event this year. On 14 October, we are holding an event entitled The Money Question: Financial Wellbeing at the Bar. This event will look beyond the gender pay gap and consider the longer term and wider impact it has on women at the Bar and consider individual and collective strategies for navigating those barriers. We have an impressive panel including Claer Barrett from the Financial Times, and a range of practitioners and judiciary of differing areas of practice and seniority.

My main task this evening is to introduce our keynote speaker. I know people always say keynote speakers need no introduction, which is absolutely true about our speaker, so forgive me if I give her a bit of a ‘fan girl intro’ because she is a truly inspirational and inspiring woman: Barbara Mills KC.

Last year’s Chair of the Bar, Barbara was the first person of colour to hold that position. She is a highly respected family practitioner. She sits as a Deputy High Court Judge – somewhere else women of colour are wrongly a rarity. Barbara has been a key player in the Bar Council’s Race groundbreaking race work in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Among the many things Barbara has achieved for the profession in her time at the Bar Council was the Harman Independent Review into Bullying, Harassment and Sexual Harassment at the Bar; an important initiative producing a solid roadmap for change and leading to our first Commissioner of Conduct: Dame Maria Miller, who we are also honoured has joined us this evening.

Barbara is a gentle, very approachable women who drives real change with power, grace and style and surprisingly limited ripples. Truly inspirational, maybe you can show Barbara if you think I am right about how amazing she is by welcoming her to the microphone in the traditional way.

Brie Stevens-Hoare KC
Gatehouse Chambers
Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn

Master Barbara Mills

Thank you, Brie, and your Co-Conveners of the Inns of Court Alliance for Women, for the invitation to say a few words at the start of this party.

It is wonderful to be here and to see everyone looking resplendent. I just love the colour and vibrant energy in the gardens this evening.

This party is an opportunity for women – from across the legal profession – to socialise and to network, to share experiences and challenges, but also to pause, enjoy the sunshine, have a drink and to celebrate our many individual as well as collective successes. And we celebrate with our male allies, too, many of whom are with us and who are, of course, most welcome.

As I look around this beautiful garden, I can’t help thinking what an appropriate setting it is for this celebratory gathering for women.

Gardens, like people, don’t flourish by accident. They thrive because someone plants seeds, nurtures new growth, removes obstacles, and has the patience to believe that today’s small shoots will become tomorrow’s magnificent trees. It’s an exercise of hope of what is possible.

The invitation to deliver this keynote address came towards the end of my year as Chair of the Bar when I was in a deeply reflective place.

The full enormity of the year was beginning to hit me – a year that was as stressful as it was joyous; challenging yet hugely rewarding – sometimes all in one day! I simply could not have managed the raft of emotions and challenges without my tribe of loyal friends, mainly women, who have always been around and whose support meant I was able to to thrive in 2025.

So, I wondered where others find their tribe and what ICAW means to women in law.

When I spoke to other women about ICAW, three distinct themes emerged.

First, women told me that ICAW actively promotes the value and importance of community. That really chimed with me. It has always been important for me to have a space, however big, which promotes inclusion and a sense of belonging. A community like ICAW, especially one that draws from across the four Inns and beyond – was not available to me ‘back in the day’ and so I am delighted that ICAW exists today and offers us a community of professionals where we can find our people – the ones who celebrate with us when we are winning and hold space and provide guidance when things are challenging.
Because, the bottom line, as ICAW understands well, is that we all do better in community.

The second theme that emerged was how much, once connections have been made within ICAW, individual women are willing and prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty, to assist each other.

I found that so inspiring not just because of the causes ICAW champions, but because it understands and promotes, through everything it does, that change happens when women unite – collaborate, uplift, and stand together. When women lift each other up, extraordinary things happen.

This resonated with my own experience. So many of the people who lifted me and guided me were women. From the pupil mistress who insisted that I sat alongside her in counsel’s row in court from day one of my pupillage which meant I was really visible and created the illusion that I had been around for longer than I had been by the time I got on my feet as a second six pupil.

It was a woman in silk, who was like a dog with a bone, as she encouraged me to apply for silk and would not take no for an answer. She even downloaded the form for me! Two female judges refused to take no for an answer about applying to be a Deputy High Court Judge. I could go on.

I am nothing without those other women. I am also nothing without the women who taught me how to balance all aspects of family life with my professional life and to do so unapologetically. It is to those women that I owe the courage to have made wellbeing – the sense of pausing and being intentional about practice – one of my priorities last year.

A couple of years ago, I went to dinner with a group of colleagues. We all started our careers around the same time and were now the recipients of a range of very impressive titles senior partners at magic circle firms, judges, KCs, heads of chambers and so on.

One of our colleagues had taken several years off to have her children and then worked part-time when she returned. As a result, she had not taken silk, become a judge or achieved any of the so-called marks of leadership. She mentioned at the dinner how much of a failure she felt when she compared herself to everyone else at the table.

I was totally shocked and realised I, and other women, had not told her that she was the female barrister who had inspired us to strive to find balance between home and work. Without her example of choosing family, I may have followed those other women who said take as little time off as possible. Her way of being a barrister had been hugely influential on me and to me that made her a real leader.

The third and final theme flows from this – and it was that ICAW was re-defining who and what is a leader.

Like many of you, when I heard the word ‘leader’ back in the day, I thought of certain positions:

• Senior Partner
• Silk
• Head of Chambers
• Judge
• Managing Director

Nothing wrong with them but they are leadership positions and titles that don’t in fact tell you anything about the qualities of a leader.

The title is not where leadership lives. Leadership lives in conversations, and brave personal decisions and in the ability to show courage to do things differently. Leadership is about influence and you don’t have to have a title to have influence. And that means every one of us at this garden party, regardless of status or title, has the ability to change things around them.

Whatever your style, our profession needs you. Because diversity in leadership is every bit as important as diversity in background, experience and thought.

Back to where I started with this beautiful and healthiest of gardens. It is not filled with one species of flower. Its beauty comes from variety. Different colours and the different heights. It looks different at different times of the year.

The same is true of our profession.

We do not all need to lead in the same way. In fact, we shouldn’t. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is permission to lead authentically. Not by trying to imitate someone else’s success. But by discovering your own.

When we reflect on our own journeys, most of us can identify someone who watered our confidence before we had the chance to grow it ourselves. They may never know the impact they had.

But we do.

And now it is our turn.

Because leadership is not about standing in the sunshine yourself but about holding your hand out and making sure others have the light they need to flourish.

There are more women entering the law than ever before. More women are leading organisations, sitting on the bench, building successful practices and shaping public life.

That progress deserves celebration.

But every gardener knows that flourishing isn’t a one-off achievement. It requires continual care.

There are still barriers to remove. Still voices to amplify. Still talent waiting to bloom if only someone believes in it. That is why gatherings like today matter so much.

They remind us that leadership is not an individual pursuit.

It is a shared responsibility – of learning, encouraging and challenging one another.

So, wherever you are on your own professional journey, remember this. You are needed to be a part of change we wish to see.

You do not need another promotion or another qualification or decades more of experience before you can influence. Start now – where you are and with what you have.

Leadership begins the moment you choose to leave people better than you found them.

I will leave it there – I am aware that I am stopping the drinks and food from flowing!

So, enjoy the party and I hope you

• make new connections.
• strengthen old ones.
• and mostly – just celebrate in the sunshine.

Thank you.

Barbara Mills KC
Chair of the Bar Council 2025

Listen to the Baby at the Bar podcast:
innertemple.org.uk/podcast/episode-3