Book Review A Life by Lady Hale

Book Review

Spider Woman: A Life by Lady Hale

Bodley Head, London 2021

We all admire Brenda Hale, the Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond, for her contribution to groundbreaking legislation such as the Family Law Act 1996 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She has star quality as the “Beyoncé of the legal world”, a “frank and fearless feminist”, outspoken on matters of equality, diversity and inclusion and of course she is known for her dry wit and good humour. Lady Hale is an “antidote to the ubiquitous male lens through which the law has traditionally been viewed” and a role model for many, at all stages of their legal careers. I picked this volume up as soon as it was published, knowing that I would be in for a very compelling read. I was not disappointed.

The reader silently cheers for young Brenda, an outsider in the Yorkshire village where she grew up, as she learns resilience from her mother and applies herself to study, taking pride in being a “swot”. She later describes the “sense of entitlement” of male colleagues when she studied law at Cambridge but remained undaunted as she realised she was “at least as good at law as they were.” Bouts of imposter syndrome are bravely brushed aside as Brenda finds her feet in her career, beginning as a law lecturer at the University of Manchester. At the Law Commission, she had to endure male colleagues referring to “Brenda’s weird child law”, later to become the pioneering Children Act 1989. We share her immense satisfaction when she describes sitting with two other female Appeal Court justices in 2001 and referring to them as “my Ladies”.

Commenting on her appointment to the judiciary, Lady Hale observes that the experience of leading a woman’s life should be just as important in shaping the law as the experience of leading men’s lives. Yet, tantalisingly, she provides very little detail on her personal life as an adult. It would be fascinating to know more about how her own experiences of work-life balance, marriage, motherhood, divorce and grandchildren were shaped by her pioneering work in family law. Her daughter Julia is mentioned only fleetingly in relation to debate over parental rights to IVF babies. Despite being so reserved about her private life, the author does not hesitate to encourage and celebrate other women professionally. The photographs in the book include Lady Hale with Ayo Onatade, her clerk at the Supreme Court, and Penelope Gorman, her judicial assistant.

In the final pages of the book, Lady Hale describes attending her last public event in London before the pandemic, when she attended the launch of the Women in Family Law initiative at Gray’s Inn and expresses the hope that she has encouraged many young people to believe they too can make it in the law. I am one of those women and was fortunate to be able to meet Lady Hale and express to her just how important she had been in encouraging me to believe in myself and my law studies on that evening at Gray’s Inn before so much changed in all our lives. ■

By Jordan Lancaster, LLM student at the University of Law.