Kate says: 'I come from a modest family background; I attended an inner-city comprehensive in a fairly rough area of Nottingham, where my mother was a teacher, and my father was a printer. None of my relatives were lawyers.' She attended a Sixth Form College and then Queen’s College Cambridge, where she read Law, having been drawn to do so by a love of public speaking, her English studies, and supportive teachers at Sixth Form College – not to mention programmes like LA Law and Rumpole of the Bailey.

She stresses the importance of getting work experience to establish what it is you want to do as a barrister: 'I recognised that I wanted a balance between paperwork and advocacy, and that I wanted a variety of cases, particularly around public law, because that had interested me at University. So, I chose carefully, worked hard, and looked for a modern, unstuffy, progressive set, which is how I found 39 Essex Street to be; they did a full range of the kinds of work that I liked.'

She is clear as to why the modern Bar is now so open and diverse, saying: ’Perhaps it’s because there are a quite a few of us now who have been to state school, university, and then qualified. I’ve sat on the pupil interview panel and I can assure you everything we do is done on merit. We work really hard, both clerks and members, to avoid discrimination, indirect or otherwise. We look at all backgrounds of applicants, and the fact that those who can’t afford to, or aren’t able to do a mini-pupillage are taken into consideration alongside those who have been lucky enough to do one, because it’s their talent for the Bar that counts, not whether they’ve been able to experience it at that age; not everyone can – it’s expensive.'

As a wife and mother herself, she has also noticed that working mothers are much more prevalent at the Bar now. 'In my set, there are a lot of women under 10 years' Call, who have had career breaks and come back to practise. In my early years, these women either came straight back to practise after a baby, or had their babies much later in life; now, chambers gives them the confidence that they can have the support they need, at whatever stage in their career, which means we keep and retain people for longer. To her, 'confidence is everything. Experience and knowledge count, but confidence counts for more. If you want to be a barrister, you should believe in yourself from an early age. Don’t talk yourself down – it’s unattractive. The inner belief that might start from a student seeing someone like me do well at a place like the Bar can be the force that propels you to take that mini-pupillage, and build that knowledge and experience from the start. But it all starts with confidence.'