In Your Defence: True Stories of Life and Law

by Sarah Langford

I was a hired mouthpiece, paid to lend my gifts of education and art to my clients, and to lead them, in all their shades of grey, through the black and white of the law.

I was aware of the contradiction between how I looked and the words I said. It was my circus trick and I loved performing it.

I was ashamed that the humiliation of exposure was, even now, worth more than someone’s life.

if she wishes to pursue her allegations of domestic violence to a contested hearing, she must understand this will involve the unthinkable prospect of being cross-examined by the person she fears most in the world.7

For, at its heart, the law is about humanity. It is about the thousand little flecks of perception and judgement that spin through the air in a courtroom, across language and class and gender. It is the reason we do not try cases on paper alone, but instead insist on holding up living, breathing flesh, and testing each side with equal strength. And, when we do that and we do it well, I believe that, more often than not, justice is done.

beautifully put

To be a legitimate voyeur into people’s lives, within a machine both ancient and modern, which tries to represent and uphold the values that underpin the country in which we live – that is an extraordinary privilege. It is not one which, no matter how hard the work or difficult the case, I have ever taken for granted.

In that moment I thought of Rita, and of my grandmother, and of all the generations of other women who had remained silently loyal to their husbands and, in doing so, had sacrificed themselves. And I thought how the law had helped them do it.