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Danielle Manson, a 34-year-old junior at Matrix Chambers, is determined to change that. Her father was in prison for much of her childhood. When she was ten her mother, an English teacher, was arrested and charged with a serious criminal offence. “She was refused bail, so while we were waiting for her trial she was in prison and I went to stay with my grandparents,” Manson says. “She was acquitted but that stayed with me, and I think that’s what led to me being a defence advocate. I feel quite passionate about representing ordinary people.” @thetimes Manson was a legal adviser on Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s play that starred Jodie Comer as a barrister who specialises in defending men accused of sexual assault. Much of her work now involves young people caught up in knife crime and gangs. “There were so many opportunities when I could have gone off the rails. I was suspended from school; I was bright but I was naughty. For me the thing that changed everything was having teachers that took me under their wing.” She got a scholarship from the Kalisher Trust, a charity that supports aspiring barristers from disadvantaged backgrounds, but she worries that the criminal justice system is not doing enough to support vulnerable young people. “If you do a youth court trial that lasts half a day you get paid £75. If you want these young people to have life chances, they need the brightest and the best to defend them, and the bottom line is that the brightest and the best aren’t going to stick around the youth court for long. You have to supplement your income with more lucrative work. “People don’t go into the criminal Bar to make money. At the beginning there’s a fire in your belly. You can tolerate the derisory pay because you get a real buzz doing this job. You see your work in action almost instantaneously. You get that ‘not guilty’ verdict and you’re there in the moment; it doesn’t compare to any other job. But we as criminal lawyers are exposed to the worst of society, the awful things that people do. The child sex offences, the horrific cases of domestic abuse. The pay is terrible, it’s spinning plates all the time and people get to a tipping point. They get scooped up by other jobs.” Back in Maidstone crown court, the prosecuting barrister in a murder trial reads out the increasingly grim WhatsApp messages between the accused and his victim; a violent, controlling relationship playing out in real time towards a gruesome end. The woman’s family is in court, listening to every word along with the jury. The advocate has her papers resting on a cardboard box. The legal process is a strange mixture of emotion and reason, tradition and modernity, Rumpole of the Bailey and Blue Peter. Later that week the defendant will be convicted and justice in that one case at least will be delivered. But on the day I visit, three of Maidstone’s eight courtrooms stand empty for most of the afternoon because of the faulty alarm system. There could not be a more potent symbol of the broken criminal justice system. thetimes.com/uk/law/article/…