Henry Hendron
Name: Henry Hendron
Employer: Government Legal Service
Position: pupil
University: Royal Holloway, University of London
Subject: politics
Graduated: 2003
Why I chose a career as a Government Legal Service barrister
I opted for public law because I was interested in ‘hard-core’ law within a political context. After graduating I worked in Parliament for a while for a member of the shadow cabinet, including helping on a couple of high profile campaigns, so doing public law was a fantastic opportunity to combine my experience in politics with my interest in law and current affairs.
Working life at the Government Legal Service
In any one week a government lawyer can be advising ministers and government officials, working on bills in Parliament (which involves meeting ministers and senior officials to try to translate policy into law) or drafting statutory instruments. Since starting pupillage I have been to meetings at various government offices, attended conferences, visited Scotland (to watch and learn about a judicial review that my department was closely involved in) and Wales (to represent the secretary of state in two appeals in front of the social security commissioner), made numerous trips to various types of court and carried out advisory work. I also spent four months on secondment to a set of chambers. At the moment my time is divided between doing advisory work for the Department of Health (looking at pharmaceutical and medicines legislation) and gaining advocacy experience by prosecuting, litigating and doing appeals in tribunals for the Department of Work and Pensions. This has meant that I have been spending a lot of time out and about at court; however, usually most of my time is spent in the office. On average I work just over 40 hours a week.
The most rewarding part of my job is...
... being part of something that is so important: the ramifications of what we do as government lawyers – from drafting statutory instruments to advising ministers – are significant to many people’s lives.