Becoming a barrister is one of the toughest career paths there is. Pupillages are hard to find, tenancies even scarcer. But the daunting route did not deter Kate Egerton, who studied English at Queen Mary, University of London, before converting to law.

“I wanted to use my writing skills. You have to be creative and good with words to be a talented lawyer,” she says.

She applied to do the solicitors’ Legal Practice Course but, at the last minute, changed her mind. “It seemed very technical; accounting, business. The Bar Vocational Course was about advocacy, drafting opinions, mock trials. It appealed to me much more.”

The only places left were on the part-time course. Looking for useful work to fill her time, but with no legal experience, in 2004 she applied for an internship at the International Bar Association (IBA) in the Human Rights Institute.

On her second day she was asked to write a speech for Mark Ellis, the IBA’s executive director, on Europe and trans-national relations after 9/11.

“He said, ‘I really want you to have a go.’ I was absolutely terrified. I knew nothing about the topic, other than what I had read in newspapers.”

Two months later, Ellis delivered her speech little changed. The experience taught her valuable research skills and was a huge confidence boost, she says. She also researched jurisdictions for the trial of Saddam Hussein. “I was a very tiny part of it. But it was absolutely fascinating.”

Still set on the Bar, with a growing interest in crime, she applied for a position as an assistant to Jim Sturman, QC. Egerton feels that her work as an intern helped her to draft responses to questions in the application form that secured the all-important interview.

Being a QC’s legal assistant is akin to a pupillage: researching in the foundation stages of a case. But working side by side with a barrister she had a change of heart. “I realised I wanted to do more case preparation. It wasn’t what a barrister would do every day.”

Solicitors research cases from the earliest stages, while barristers pick them up later to present them to court. A spell as a paralegal for Hickman & Rose, which specialises in criminal, civil and prison law, confirmed her ideas. Staying in criminal law meant that the change wasn’t as big as one might imagine; the work frequently takes her to police stations and courts.

“A lot is made of the rift between barristers and solicitors. Until I crossed over I had no idea how close they were.” She plans to take the transfer test to qualify as a solicitor, in a sense a step back to “the accounting I shirked right at the beginning”.

Egerton enjoys the business side of a solicitor’s work. “You feel much more part of a team. As a barrister it’s quite lonely.”

She now investigates cases of international fraud and corruption. “Criminal law is the most interesting, the most challenging and the biggest adrenalin rush imaginable,” she says.

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