Prima Facie by Suzie Miller EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Suzie Miller
- Language: English
- Genre: Australian & Oceanian Poetry
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THOROUGHBREDS. EVERY SINGLE one. Primed for the race, every muscle
pumped; groomed in expensive, understated, designer grey or navy suits,
classic white shirts, black robes. All these top legal women have a sort of
swagger, an ironic way of owning the space, a satchel flung from one
shoulder to the opposite hip. Nude or red lipstick, not too much mascara.
Cool earrings, and designer boots, or cheeky heels bought on a trip
overseas. I study them all. Have done so for years. Copy them.
I’m a good
mimic. Eventually I become better at ‘being a barrister’ than the ones born
to it. The top women do law differently to the men, subtly different, and it
takes a while for me to compute the various ways they own the space. All
the little details are secret code for ‘we’re here but we’re doing it our way,
not like the crusty old male barristers of the past’. And these details
accumulate the more confident you become, the more you own your space
in court.
Barrister-bags in pink or blue are placed around the court, like loyal
dogs beside their owners: blue for baby barristers of fewer than twenty
years, the pink ones are a badge of honour, given to a junior barrister by a
KC who has singled them out for praise. I was granted a pink one, and I
treasure it, but I use mine more ironically than anything else. Soft, thick,
white ropes of a certain length and texture act as handles; blazoned with
hand-stitched initials in the only font permitted, and lined with courtapproved ticking. A barrister-bag was once a thing of pride, supposed to be
used for carrying briefs and materials for court – they might have been
useful centuries ago – but now, really they’re for show. Symbols of the elite,
handed down from father to son to son.
Sometimes a daughter received her
father’s bag, but those barristers – the women who grew up with law in the
family – they don’t have the same uncomfortable relationship with these
things that I do; they don’t love the law like I do either. They don’t see it as
a tool for power in the way I always have; don’t hold it tight. Sure, they
know it is ‘powerful’, but most slipped into the law as if settling into an old
leather armchair, and think of it more as a family business, not a desperate
arena to fight for justice.
It’s easy to pick these women. They mostly don’t do criminal law,
nothing grubby. Nothing risky. If they do opt for a criminal practice, it’s
usually a tame version, and often chosen more out of curiosity than life
experience, more for the excitement than the desire to fight for clients on
the lowest rungs of social standing.
For those of us beyond the barrister-bag accoutrements, the satchel is a
much better statement; confident, unfazed, a symbol of having made it well
past the need for a security blanket, our own little badge of honour.
Yet there are some things we all have in common: the horsehair wigs
that cover our well-cut, warmly coloured styles that give all women
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