Chloe Lee
Host Organisation: Spire Barristers
Chloe was born and brought up in Liverpool by her father, and is the youngest of three girls.
She studied Law at the University of Liverpool and her dissertation focused on child trafficking within the UK (‘Internal Child Sex Trafficking: Rethinking the Modern Slavery Act 2015’). Whilst studying, Chloe gained practical legal experience by undertaking a number of pro-bono projects. In particular, her work as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and an intern on the EU Children’s Rights Judgments project exposed her to real life cases. The latter experience helped Chloe realised her desire to work in family and social welfare law.
In addition to this, Chloe volunteered at both the Personal Support Unit and Citizen’s Advice Bureau in her spare time. These roles exposed her to a wide range of issues that vulnerable and disadvantaged people face daily.
During her time at University, Chloe was lucky to secure a full scholarship to study Mandarin at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China. She spent a year learning the language and culture, and taught English at a nearby school during the weekend – an opportunity she loved.
In 2016, Chloe was awarded the Rose Scholarship from Middle Temple, which enabled her to study the BPTC. Chloe is not afraid to fight for what she believes in, and so during the BPTC, she set up a Children’s Rights Advocacy Group working with Communities Empowerment Network. This was a new pro bono initiative to tackle the issue of prejudicial school exclusions. Additionally, Chloe was appointed as the Student Director of the Human Rights Unit at BPP where she was proactive in organising clothing drives and rallying volunteers for local soup kitchens.
After finishing her studies, Chloe began work as a legal assistant to a Queen’s Counsel in London. This role gave Chloe practical and first-hand experience of working with clients, and was an invaluable foundation for her career at the Bar. This confirmed her choice of wanting to practise law in an area involving vulnerable individuals and being able to give a voice to those in need.
Chloe is delighted to be a Justice First Fellow, and is currently completing the first year of her project at Advocate (previously known as the Bar Pro Bono Unit) as a Caseworker. She is looking forward to starting her family and public law pupillage at Spire Barristers in October.
Project
Aligning with her commitment to supporting vulnerable people, Chloe is creating a podcast, which will discuss issues that are at the heart of family law.
As the law is complicated, and often inaccessible to everyday people, the aim of the podcast is to give people a better understanding of ongoing problems the public often encounter with gaining access to justice in family law. Chloe will do this by covering topics which are actual legal problems that families face daily.
She wants to open up the conversation about what is going wrong, what litigants in person face, what is being done to overcome the problems and most importantly where people can go for help.
