In conversation: Chair of the Bar and the Lady Chief Justice

Barbara Mills KC is Chair of the Bar 2025. She is joint head of chambers at 4PB and practises in family law specialising in difficult, complex and sensitive cases concerning children, often with an international element. Barbara is an arbitrator and a mediator committed to non-court resolutions, sits as a deputy High Court judge, and has been a recorder on the South Eastern Circuit for over 10 years. Barbara is also a governing bencher at Inner Temple. 

Earlier this year Barbara set out her priorities for 2025 in an inaugural address: raising the profile of the family Bar (including in relation to tackling violence against women and girls), enhancing the wellbeing of the profession, making further strides on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and continuing to press for the resources needed to restore the justice system. 

The Rt Hon the Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill became Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales on 1 October 2023. As Lady Chief Justice, she is the first female President of the Courts of England and Wales and Head of the Judiciary of England and Wales. Her judicial career began in 2009 in crime. She was appointed to the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division in 2013, and became the second female High Court Judge to sit in the Commercial Court and the first female High Court Judge to sit in the Technology and Construction Court in 2014. She was elevated to the Court of Appeal in 2020. She was appointed as the Senior Judicial Commissioner and Vice Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission shortly thereafter, remaining in that role until January 2023. She was a temporary Investigatory Powers Commissioner during the Covid-19 pandemic.