I quite enjoyed this. 11 accounts if various trials. An interesting insight into the life of a barrister. ( )

“I had forgotten one of the most important lessons my job had taught me. There was no one truth, there was no one story. Instead there were, behind every case, just webs of messy lives. To look for the truth in a case was to forget my role. It was my responsibility to guide those who came my way as best I could through the law and its systems, with humanity and empathy. It was my job to give them, as far as I was able, what they wanted. And I must try to do this even when what they wanted was not always, in the end, actually justice.”

Sarah Langford is a barrister, a court/trial lawyer with a particular passion for criminal law. In this collection of eleven cases from magistrate and crown courts, Langford tells the stories of a wide variety of people she represented—among them: a young offender who chronically burgles badly; a man charged with gross indecency for “cottaging” (engaging in sex in a public lavatory); a Bangladesh-born, non-English-speaking young wife whose violent husband seeks to gain custody of their young child; an 18-year-old possible pedophile; and a 22-year-old mother, herself the daughter of chaos and dysfunction, who has already had one child taken away and now stands to lose her newborn son.

Langford’s book is mostly both entertaining and educational. The cases read like short stories with fully fleshed-out characters, psychological insights, and often suspense. Legal terms are usually seamlessly incorporated and explained within the main body of the text, but the reader can also check footnotes, which provide more detailed information.

The reader learns how the courts work, how a case is processed, and something about the daily life of barrister, who is not only responsible for properly representing clients’ stories and interests, but also an interpreter, a social worker, psychiatrist, educator, and even a parent at times. Langford’s ethical dilemmas, emotional responses, her wrangling with her own more shameful reactions to clients and their stories are laid out honestly for the reader to consider. Langford is an intelligent and likeable guide whom I enjoyed spending time with. ( )