Dr Alice Irving was back at Otago to present the Law and Society lecture.
Combining a connection with people with the intellectual challenge of a legal career has been central to alumna Dr Alice Irving's journey in Law.
The London-based civil and public law practitioner, who was invited back to Otago to present the Law Faculty's Law and Society lecture earlier this year, began her studies in Law and Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, but transferred to Otago so she could combine social work training with her law degree.
“I craved something that was a bit more direct impact,” says Dr Irving, who now works at Doughty Street Chambers, London. “I think I've always had a pull towards working with individuals and not just spending my time thinking about intellectual things.”
She says the skills she learned from Community and Family Studies at Otago have stood her in good stead for the work she does now with vulnerable and marginalised communities.
Although, as a self-confessed “geek”, she's also done plenty of heavy-lifting when it comes to taking on an intellectual challenge. After graduating from Otago with her LLB (Hons) and BA majoring in Community and Family Studies in 2010, Dr Irving won a Rhodes Scholarship to study for a Bachelor of Civil Law and MPhil in Law at the University of Oxford.
During this time, she won the Oxford Law Faculty Prize in Criminal Justice and Human Rights; the Oxford Law Faculty Prize in Medical Law and Ethics and was Vinerian Proxime Accessit (second overall on the Bachelor of Civil Law).
She went on to do her DPhil in Law at Oxford, her doctorate spanning criminal law and the criminology department – “which I guess is that overlap again with law and social work”.
Her thesis questioned how early in the process of preparing to commit a crime someone's actions can be criminalised. She was concerned at the expansion of state power and the way it was being applied, particularly against minorities or vulnerable communities.
“I did my doctorate arguing about the limits of the law and saying in a nutshell criminal law is not the answer to this kind of problem. I had the easy part saying criminal law is not the answer, not saying what the answer would be. But the answer would be more social interventions.”
While at Oxford she received funding from Oxford Pro Bono Publico, and spent time as an intern at the Women's Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. She also taught first-years at three Oxford Colleges and was co-founder of the Oxford University Student Union anti-sexual violence campaign It Happens Here.
After completing her doctorate, Dr Irving decided she wanted to become a public law barrister, which she describes as a role focussed on holding the state to account and challenging public decision-making. This took her to Doughty Street Chambers – “Its central ethos is very human rights and justice-focussed.”
She currently works across education law, with a particular focus on the rights of people with special education needs. She also works on social care and housing cases.
“I'm not the social worker in those people's lives, but a lot of them are engaged with social services. I'll be arguing mostly with local authorities about trying to get them to provide more support to my clients. They have special education needs or language therapy needs, or they need more care in the home because they have significant needs, or they've been discriminated against because of their disability, or are fleeing domestic abuse and they need secure housing.
“So you can see the way it's all [law and social work] come together in the end.”
Admitted to the Bar in 2018, in 2021 she was a finalist for Legal Aid Newcomer of the Year at the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards. She is also ranked as a Rising Star in Education Law in the Legal 500 directory.
Dr Irving says the biggest challenge of her job, apart from the workload, is the emotional side of the work.
“I have so much respect for people in social work. I don't actually think I could be a social worker because of the emotional toll and resilience required. As a lawyer, I'm one removed and I get to turn up and say I'm here to work on your legal problem. I bring to bear the kind of people skills I developed, to make my clients comfortable and to try to minimise the stress of what is necessarily a stressful legal process as much as possible.
“But I still find that sometimes very emotional and very challenging, because you work with some incredibly vulnerable people. A lot of my clients are profoundly mentally unwell, which is really challenging and very distressing.
“When you succeed in helping someone in that position, it's wonderful, when you don't, it's absolutely miserable. And so I find navigating that emotionally hard; that's why I say hats off to social workers.”
Dr Irving says her work as a barrister provides her with the perfect combination of academic stimulation and meaningful work. “It's challenging, it's hard, it stretches me, with stuff that feels like it matters. I'm not sure how many jobs provide you with that combination. It's kind of a sweet spot for me.”
On her visit to Otago, she enjoyed catching up with lecturers and seeing some of her peer group who are now Faculty members, “which is awesome but it feels a bit odd. Even when you're at this stage you get imposter syndrome a bit, I don't think that ever goes away”.
She says she owes a huge credit to many lecturers at Otago, for the investment they had in students, but also the value sets they brought to their work.
“They weren't just phenomenal lecturers, they actually cared about us and they also cared about societal issues. In the law degree you had lecturers who were emphasising principles of human rights and service to others and then obviously in social work those values went through and through.”
Her Law and Society lecture was on the topic of Activist lawyers: public law as a tool for social justice. She says the 'Activist lawyers' refers to rhetoric being used in the UK by government ministers trying to attack lawyers, “who are getting in the way of some of their less humane policies”.
“I want to get students thinking, OK, you've got the skillset that you're developing here in the Faculty of Law, how can you use that to support social change? And that doesn't necessarily always have to be these big sexy cases that get in the news, but also how can you support marginalised individuals? Often the law is a tool for doing that. How can you use it as a tool for good? I want to give the students some food for thought around that and some inspiration.”
She says part of the reason she had the confidence to apply for a scholarship to Oxford was because there were people two years in front of her that had done it, and she wants the students to see there are lots of possibilities.
Her advice to them would be not to shy away from applying for scholarships overseas, and to look around and think a bit laterally about directions they can take.
“Take every opportunity you can to talk to people, ask questions and be bit brave about stepping off the obvious path, don't just get swept along. The final thing would be; you're really young, I'm only three years into my practice as a barrister and I'm 36. It's not always a straight line so don't be too anxious about getting it right straight away.”