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Her Bar was founded in 2021 by then pupil barristers Nasreen Shah and Rachel Bale. It is a bespoke multi-purpose platform designed to follow and support the trajectory of a woman barrister’s career. At Her Bar, we provide original curated content, advice and resources in order to help support genuine issues women barristers continue to face including topics such as financial difficulties, work allocation, preparing for career breaks, harassment, menopause at work, applying for silk etc…
However, most importantly, Her Bar creates a community of women, who share the same profession and same issues and a space for them to ask and receive support and guidance, through our ‘Members’ area.
Her Bar’s goal is to become the platform for aspiring and practising female barristers, as a go-to place for all information, resources and support required to help entry, building and progression in the profession.
We collaborate with existing networking groups and organisations who have space to promote their events, products and initiatives, all with the aim of promoting gender parity at the Bar. Her Bar is a female-led company created by women barristers for women barristers.
Nasreen is a Barrister at Great James Street Chambers, practicing in crime, family and extradition. Nasreen has a keen interest in women's rights, having specialised early on in her career. She has worked across four continents with international NGOs, has spearheaded women's rights campaigns and worked on legislative changes within the UK, and abroad.
Nasreen is a supporter of the Centre for Women's Justice, a committee member of the Young Legal Aid Lawyers, and an advisory panel member at Inside Justice.
Prior to joining the Bar, the former Fulbright Scholar from Luxembourg was a legal adviser for a specialist domestic violence NGO and worked as a judicial assistant to Judge Turkovic at the European Court of Human Rights.
Rachel is a Barrister at 3 Paper Buildings, based in their Oxford branch, practicing primarily in property, family finance and commercial areas. Rachel has an interest in women’s rights which inspired her creation of the blog Lady of the Land, which discusses property issues which directly impact women.
Rachel has a desire to assist those from backgrounds underrepresented in law enter the Bar having co-founded a mentoring programme, ‘Future Lawyers’ which provides support for aspiring barristers who may have been in care, received free school meals, have a disability or be an ethnic minority through 1-2-1 coaching. She also acted as a mentor for the BSB’s reverse race mentoring scheme in 2020-2021.
Prior to joining the Bar, Rachel worked as a Legal Support Officer at Matrix Chambers, represented clients suffering Housing issues as a volunteer for the Trainee Litigation Project and also worked with victims of marital rape in Lomé, Togo.
