Host Gautam Bhattacharyya welcomes Isha Shakir of Henderson Chambers for this episode of Spotlight on… The conversation explores Isha’s decision to enter the legal profession as a barrister, mentors she has benefited from along the way, career highlights to date and what SAHM 2025 means to her.

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Transcript:

Intro: Welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our international arbitration practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started. 

Gautam: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our latest episode of our Spotlight on podcast series. And this is one of our special mini-series to mark South Asian Heritage Month 2025, the theme of which is Roots to Roots. And I'm really delighted today to have as our guest the wonderful Isha Shakir. Isha is a barrister at Henderson Chambers in London. I've been really looking forward to this discussion with her because she's really one of the real bright stars at the bar. And I know she's got a huge career in front of her. She's already done lots and lots, and I'm going to introduce you to her by saying a few words about her. So Isha, as I mentioned, is a barrister at Henderson Chambers. She has a broad practice, both litigation and arbitration, and inquiries of which she has considerable experience. And interestingly she's involved currently in the Dieselgate group litigation and amongst other things in the post office inquiry. It's a really great experience and amongst her areas also she can include insolvency and various aspects of commercial law practice. So it's really really good to have you on Isha. I'm really looking forward to our discussion. Let me ask you this to get us going then. Tell us a little bit about your background, because this is about heritage. So tell us a little bit about your, well, first of all, maybe your family's background, your own personal background in terms of your journey to where you are today as a, as I say, a bright star at the bar and why you chose to do law and ultimately also why you wanted to become a barrister.

Isha: Sure. Well, firstly, it's an honour to be on your podcast, and it's an honour to meet you. In terms of my family's background, so my granddad emigrated here to the UK from Pakistan, and he chose this little town called Bishop Auckland in County Durham to settle down. He had my dad, so my dad is first generation English, and my mum is Pakistani, and that's my background so I grew up in Bishop Auckland which is in County Durham next to Newcastle that's the accent I'm trying to retain my accent in a form of defiance.

Gautam: You should be very proud of it you should be very proud of that accent.

Isha: I am I'm very proud of it I am and so I guess where I started was you know growing up in Bishop Auckland and it's quite serious from the get-go because I'm the only ethnic minority in my school and also in my town and I'm the only visibly Muslim person there too and as I grow up I realized that during school and you know when I walked to town there is a lot of resistance against who I am and my identity in the form of Islamophobia, racism and it was quite intense growing up because you know I can tell you my first memory of primary school is being called dirty sat on a bench crying and I told the teachers about this and this is like a reoccurring story in my life is that I do tell people and nothing is done and I'm told to have thicker skin I think that was the sort of starting point for me to go internal and to gain this resilience and strength from myself from my faith and to then embrace my identity years later, which was the cause of so much pain growing up. And just moving on to secondary school, it was no better. In fact, it was a lot worse because, I mean, kids at that age are very judgmental. But when incidents happen, like terrorist incidents or whatever, I would be called a terrorist. I'd be told it was my fault. I'd be spat on. One of the main incidents was that a teacher drew the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, on the board. And thought that was okay and a funny thing to do. And this is like, this is the background that I guess created who I am. And another sort of pivotal moment, I think, in my life was a careers advisor. You know, I went to a state school. I'm the first in my family to eventually go to university and the first in my family to have a proper profession in that sense. And I was really motivated growing up to go to uni and I wanted to do that so I told that to my careers advisor and she said to me that I wasn't smart enough to go to university and I should do a beautician course in the local college instead and that was her advice to me without looking at my grades without assessing my aspirations without knowing anything about me I was stereotyped into being a beautician and then even more heartbreaking is when I leave the this meeting this awful meeting and I talk to my school colleagues and they say that they were told the exact opposite that they were told to go to university and to aim high and I just thought that is systematic racism that I've had to come across and it took, it actually devastated me for about a week. And I went home and I was crying and my parents were asking me, you know, what's, what's going on? Come on, tell us. And then I told them, and that is, I think. The support that I received from them is so important in my life because they just said to me, don't let anyone tell you no. You go for it and you try. And it's going to be hard. It's not going to be easy. But if you work hard, if you hold on to your faith, you can accomplish things. And I really internalized that. And I was like, okay, these people are writing me off. They're underestimating me, which still happens to this day. And we'll talk about that. But it doesn't define my capabilities and my potential right I I can do I can change, opinions and I can aspire for great things so I used that incident as well to convince my family to let me go to a six form and outside of my little town in a different town called Darlington and I convinced them to let me travel on the bus for an hour and a half each day to get there. And that place was a bit more, it was more diverse. I didn't feel like the odd one out. And the teachers were really supportive. And I managed to get good grades at A-level and I got into York University. And as I started university, that careers advisor was still in the back of my mind. And I was thinking, I got in, that's great, but am I really smart enough to be here? And I just had to battle against that self out and I just tried really hard. I worked hard. You know, my faith comes into it because I truly believe that I'm protected. There is a plan for me and that all I have to do is try my best and everything else will work out. That's what I believe in. And it did. So with York, I think someone was looking after me and trying to really correct that, in a dialogue that I had with that careers advisor and every single person that told me that I wasn't good enough or that I don't deserve to be here because I ended up getting the highest academic grade three years in a row at York. And I graduated top of my year. and I think that that moment was just the seal on all of that negativity of the past that actually I am smart enough to be here I do deserve to be here and I can accomplish great things at York I was told about well actually I can phase in when becoming a barrister was you know on my radar because growing up I didn't know what a barrister was and there's that that cliche of barrister/barista and I honestly did not know the difference and obviously I knew I knew about lawyers things but I didn't know about the bar and how I came across that was in my first year of university I randomly signed up to become a witness in just this you know the advocacy training process they do for barristers to just refresh their skills like CDP and I was playing this witness who couldn't see very well and I was just acting at this point. And the senior silk who was training the other barristers said to me, you'd be very good at mooting. And I just smiled and nodded and I was like, oh, thank you. And I secretly hoped that mooting was a good thing because I had never heard of it. And I remember afterwards, I came off the stand. And I Googled what is mooting and I realized what it was. And I just threw myself into it because I thought, okay, well, let's give this a chance. Let's try. And as I did that, I discovered more about what being a barrister was because I was actually doing it, these little mock trials and cross-examination pieces and all of those things. And I realized that I really like advocacy. I really like complex legal problems. I was already dealing with that in my degree, sort of the law side of things. But it was the advocacy side of things that really came alive for me. And I felt electric every time I was on my feet. And I felt the idea of representing someone in court and speaking for people and for clients. It was amazing to me and something that I truly believe that I was created to do. I think another part of my passion for advocacy came in a little bit earlier than that because I decided to do something about this Islamophobia problem, to do something about the racism in my little town. I mean, my town has annual marches, which is Bishop Auckland against Islam.