Advice of UK’S top judge: Don’t let the b ******* grind you down

THE first female president of the UK Supreme Court has delivered some typically robust advice to a young woman considering a legal career, telling her: “Don’t let the b ******* grind you down.”

Yorkshire-born Lady Hale of Richmond, who became the UK’S top judge in September, made the remark at an event in Edinburgh last night after giving a lecture on 20 years of devolution.

She was asked what advice she would give to a bright second-year secondary pupil who was in the audience at the Signet Library, and who was looking to study law.

Lady Hale told her: “Number one would be ‘go for it girl’. If you’ve got it in you to do it, do it.”

She said the law was “a rather weird subject” that didn’t suit everyone, so it was vital to like it and the thought processes involved in order to be good at it, especially if you wanted to become a judge.

She said hard work was also needed, but loving the law was key.

“Subject to both of those, don’t let the b ******* grind you down,” she said.

Lady Hale, 73, became the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court in 2009, and became its deputy president in 2013.

She is due to chair the high-profile hearing next month at which the Court will decide whether the Scottish Parliament’s alternative Brexit Bill is legally competent.

Asked about the current row over the EU Withdrawal Bill and whether devolution was a long-term solution to the “democratic deficit” within the UK, she conspicuously side-stepped the question.

Lady Hale said: “The UK Parliament does retain full legislative competence, and so [devolution] isn’t a transfer, it is a delegation [of power]. The political consequences of that are a matter for the politicians not the lawyers.”

Lady Hale was among the justices who ruled against the Scottish Government in 2017 on whether Holyrood had a say in triggering Article 50 and the Brexit process.

The court ruled the Sewel Convention, which says Westminster will not “normally” legislate in devolved areas without consent, was not legally enforceable.

Lady Hale told the event, which was organised by the Scottish Public Law Group, that the Convention was “not law in the standard sense”, but “the practice of politicians”.

Its reference to “normally” meant it was not even a “universal rule”.

If you’ve got it in you to do it, do it