★★★☆☆

Sarah Langford’s take on the popular “professional confessional” is a neat, heartfelt collection of eleven of her cases as a barrister in both the family and criminal courts. Langford explains that the cases she relays are true in essence, with a number of details changed – such as race, gender and location – borrowed from other cases.

Langford’s writing style is clear and articulate and she deftly dodges getting bogged down in alienating legal jargon. Her handling of points of law are coherent and succinct as she cleanly selects the most relevant details. She is also refreshingly honest and self-aware to the point of not always portraying herself in the most positive light, calling out a tendency for barristers to treat their cases as a sport and emphasising the human impact and consequences for the individuals involved in her job.

The cases explored raise awareness (and outrage) of the lack of protections for domestic violence victims in the family courts compared to in criminal courts, where screens are provided when victims give evidence or where they’re given the choice of testifying via video link. Similarly, Langford expresses frustration at the rigid bureaucracy of the courts when dealing with complex and emotionally difficult events in someone’s real life, and the reduction of traumatic events into documents and paperwork.

Langford’s self-confessed love for words shines through, but it does feel as if she gets carried away in romanticising her own life and career, veering once or twice into framing her clients’ lives as romantic-tragic. Alongside this, despite her adept tackling of aspects of the law, the book feels like it lacks any meaningful analysis or criticism of the law and its distance from real lives and real people at times. As a result the book feels as if it lacks development with no stance on the law in general linking the cases.

In Your Defence was a much more satisfying read for me than its professional-confessional counterpart, The Secret Barrister. Its focus on the human side really works, but Langford’s (understandable) measures to protect the privacy of her clients add a distance that seems to grow as the book progresses and unfortunately dampened my overall enjoyment.