Silent Chambers: How Safe Are We, Really?

Reflections on safety, vigilance, and the unspoken risks of legal practice

Recently, I was catching up with an old friend who works as a psychologist. I asked him if he ever does Family Reports for family law proceedings, and he said he didn’t - not primarily because of how stressful it is, but because he worried someone might come and firebomb his house.

I laughed at first, thinking he was exaggerating. Then I realised he wasn’t. And something about that landed heavily with me.

In all honesty - and perhaps naively - it struck me, that in nearly a decade of practising law, I’ve never truly questioned my personal safety in the course of my work. I’ve worried about tight deadlines or unreasonably stubborn clients, and perhaps about how I might tackle a particularly challenging cross-examination or missing a point of law or evidence. But not once - until that conversation - had I paused to consider that doing my job might carry a physical risk.

It’s hardly an unreasonable thought when you consider what our work involves. We stand face to face with people in crisis - people who lash out, who break the law, who harm those closest to them. Yet, for some reason, we hold onto this subtle belief that their anger or volatility will never turn toward us. Maybe that’s how we cope - by assuming the danger stops at the courtroom door.

It’s very easy to think of ourselves as somehow insulated from that risk, as though professional distance alone offers us some sort of immunity from becoming the target of that anger or volatility. Perhaps it’s a necessary illusion - a self-preserving act of denial that allows us to keep doing the work - but it’s a dangerous one nonetheless.

Despite how logical and even self-evident it seems in the context of our work, the notion that I could personally be at risk within my own workplace was not something that had ever truly occurred to me.

Growing Up with “Real” Danger

I grew up watching my father, a firefighter, head off for night shift - going off to "rescue people" was how I put it. I was always so proud of that - my dad, the hero. But despite this pride, I frequently worried about whether he’d come home the next morning. Even though firefighters are statistically quite safe in their profession, and despite his best attempts to reassure me, it never felt that way to me as a child.

Now, as an adult - rather ironically - I’m married to a paramedic. He's exposed to the extremes of human volatility on a daily basis. He’s been assaulted on duty. And it’s an ever-present risk in his line of work. And just as I did as a child when my father kissed me on the cheek before heading off for his shift, I still feel that same pang of worry every time my husband walks out the door to start his. It’s a tender contradiction - a flicker of fear shadowed by the quiet hope that he’ll return safely; the same ache I remember from childhood. It's very brief and fleeting, like an unpleasant background noise, but it's there.

I sincerely have a profound respect for those in frontline professions who work each day under the shadow of personal risk to serve others. Their courage sustains our communities, yet we seldom recognise it in full - I think we too often acknowledge their courage in passing - through gestures of gratitude that, while sincere, rarely capture the depth of what it means to live with that kind of daily uncertainty. It’s easy to admire bravery from a safe distance; harder to truly grasp what it costs.

But because the risks faced by those frontline workers are so visible, and so ingrained as an accepted “occupational hazard”, I think we develop a false sense of safety in other professions. When danger isn’t obvious, or part of society’s collective consciousness as an expected feature of the job, it’s easy to believe the danger simply isn't there. So in my mind, danger has always belonged to those professions - emergency services, frontline work, dealing with inherently dangerous situations. It hadn’t really occurred to me that my own workplace might be one too.

Asking the Question: “Are We Safe?”

Curious, I put the question to a professional community I’m part of:

“Does anyone ever worry about their safety due to the area of law they practice in?”

I expected maybe a few comments, and I anticipated that their responses would align with my own perspective - possibly conceding to moments of apprehension, but ultimately characterising those fears as irrational or unfounded. Instead, the responses were overwhelming and startling. Lawyers from around the country - many of them family or criminal law practitioners - shared stories that shocked me.

When I looked into it further, I found that these accounts weren’t confined to the relatively small professional community where I first posed the question. The same kinds of experiences were being shared in other professional spaces too - somewhat reticently, within their own circles and professional silos. This fragmentation creates an illusion of rarity - making these incidences appear as extreme exceptions to the norm, when in reality they form part of a broader, largely unspoken pattern.

For privacy reasons I won’t name anyone or include identifying details, as I want to acknowledge the trust and courage it took for colleagues to share what they did. These experiences were shared in a safe and supportive space, and I don’t take lightly the responsibility of using those voices here. But I do feel I have a duty to raise this issue more broadly - not to sensationalise it, but to start a necessary conversation. We owe it to each other, as a profession, to bring these realities into the open. Only by doing so can we begin to recognise the risks we might not have considered, share strategies that help, and look out for one another in a more deliberate way.

The Lived Experience of our Colleagues

There were lawyers who had received death threats, often multiple times. Some had been stalked, followed from court or from their offices to their cars. Others had clients turn up unannounced at their homes, or send threatening emails mentioning their children.

One practitioner recalled a client self-immolating in a mid-tier firm’s reception area two decades ago. Another described a colleague being attacked with a hammer in his office.

Many had taken extraordinary protective measures: installing cameras, training in self-defence, registering as silent electors, even going as far as completely relocating themselves and their family to a new home, new schools and new workplaces.

One lawyer wrote that she never drives straight home from court - she always takes a detour to a dead-end road to ensure she’s not being followed. Another said her child had a different surname to her own, and that she’d set up a lockdown protocol with the school in case a threat ever materialised. Several had removed themselves from property titles to prevent clients or aggrieved parties from tracing their addresses.

One recalled having to retain full-time private security for months after a case involving threats. Another described the mental toll of receiving serious death threats from a father in a parenting dispute.

Several shared that they no longer stay in the office after dark, that their workplaces have dual exits and cameras monitoring the car park, and that it’s now considered standard practice to accompany each other to cars at night.

Many wrote of having been verbally abused, spat on, their offices vandalised, cars keyed, or social-media pages flooded with vitriol. Others had faced physical aggression and had been seriously assaulted in their workplace.

These weren’t isolated, extreme anecdotes - they were numerous, detailed - and heartbreakingly, almost routine. It became clear that a lingering undercurrent of fear permeates through parts of our profession - particularly in the areas of family, crime, and child protection, where people’s emotions are at their rawest and the stakes their highest.

Why We Don’t Talk About It

There are cultural reasons lawyers rarely talk about personal safety. We’re trained to be dispassionate, to hold our ground, to keep the focus on the client, not ourselves. Vulnerability doesn’t sit easily in a profession that prizes composure and control.

But that silence comes at a cost. When we don’t acknowledge the risks, we leave individuals to navigate them alone - often feeling ashamed that they’re even afraid.

It’s also easy to underestimate danger when it doesn’t always look dramatic. Threats in our world can be subtle, cumulative: the lingering car that follows you out of the car park, the name you see re-appearing in your email inbox months after a case has finalised, the angry father’s stare that lingers a fraction too long as he leaves the witness box.

Most of us shrug these off. We normalise them. But every so often, a tragedy jolts the profession back to awareness - a lawyer attacked outside chambers, a social worker stalked, a judge threatened. Then, after a brief flurry of alarm, it fades from conversation again.

The Insidious Reality of “Danger” in Our Profession

It made me reflect on why I hadn’t given much thought to my own safety. I think part of it is because, as a barrister, I occupy a slightly different position from solicitors. We are, by the nature of our role, somewhat insulated, and one step removed from clients. We don’t field phone calls or emails from clients late at night, but that is very much the nature of a solicitor’s work, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that solicitors are essentially on the ‘front line’. I suppose that layer of distance as a barrister creates a sense of safety - real or imagined.

But that distance doesn’t mean immunity. The same anger or distress that someone might direct towards an opposing party and their legal representation, or even towards their own solicitor, can spill into how they perceive counsel - particularly when counsel scrutinises their evidence and becomes the visible face of the argument in court.

The hard truth is that in a profession that so often intersects with raw emotion and distress - where people’s lives and emotions are at their most volatile - any one of us could find ourselves on the receiving end of someone else’s misplaced rage.

In solidarity, we have a collective responsibility to look out for one another: to check in with instructing solicitors, to be aware of their safety leaving court, to ensure meetings occur in secure, neutral settings, and to normalise conversations about risk without stigma.

We can’t allow safety to be treated as a private concern for each practitioner to solve alone. It must be part of the professional culture; we owe it to each other to stay aware, stay connected, and stay safe.

The Gendered Layer

There’s also the gendered dimension. I suspect that part of the reason I’ve never consciously thought much about safety in my profession is because the vigilance is already built in, subconsciously perhaps, because I’m a woman. Most women carry a lifetime of instinctual safety routines: avoiding walking alone at night, pretending to talk on the phone, holding keys between fingers, softening tone to defuse hostility. We’ve internalised protective habits to the point they’re almost invisible. It’s not paranoia, it’s survival conditioning.

So it’s very likely my sense of safety at work isn't in the absence of danger - it's in the presence of habits so ingrained I’d stopped noticing them. I’m not for a moment suggesting that men are somehow immune from these dangers because they’re not women. My perspective about this innate hyper-vigilance by virtue of being a woman reflects only my own lived experience, rather than any assumption about others.

The Questions We Don’t Ask

While the issue of my own personal safety has rarely occupied the forefront of my professional thinking, I do recall a fairly recent occasion when that innate, subconscious vigilance - the kind that operates quietly in the background - suddenly surfaced and affected the way I handled a situation at work.

I was in a trial - Family Law - cross-examining the Respondent Father. My advocacy style is commonly described as very firm, persistent, and at times confrontational - an approach not taken well by this particular witness. And as the cross-examination went on, I could see his anger rising.

It wasn’t my questions that provoked it so much as his own answers. I could feel the hostility building - the air in the courtroom became extremely tense; he leaned forward, almost leaning off the edge of the witness box. His teeth were clenched between answers, his breathing shallow and strained. His face became so red you’d be forgiven for thinking he was sunburnt. All signs that I suppose we’re all conditioned to instantly recognise as a threat.

Instinctively, I changed tack. I softened my tone, offered a small acknowledgment of his frustration - a measure of validation I didn’t really believe, just to keep things calm.

It worked, and the tension eased.

It was only later that I realised what had happened. I had moderated my advocacy out of fear. Not overt fear - nothing conscious - but a deep, human impulse to keep myself safe.

That realisation bothered me. Did I compromise my effectiveness? Should I have pressed harder? Or was it simply adaptive - reading a situation and preserving equilibrium? Had I compromised my performance out of self-protection? Should I be criticised for that? I don’t know.

These are not questions we’re trained to ask. Yet they matter, because fear of danger - real or perceived - shapes behaviour. It influences how we question, how we negotiate, how long we stay late, who we agree to meet, even whether we take a particular brief.

The Hidden Emotional Toll

Living with that background vigilance carries a psychological cost. Fear, even when managed, is exhausting. It narrows focus, amplifies threat perception, and erodes the boundary between work and home. Many lawyers who shared their experiences described chronic hyper-vigilance: scanning crowds, avoiding public listings of their names, double-locking doors, checking mirrors on the drive home.

That level of alertness, sustained over years, inevitably seeps into wellbeing. It contributes to burnout, anxiety, disrupted sleep, and an undercurrent of distrust that can be hard to shake.

It’s also isolating. Practitioners in small or solo practices, particularly in regional areas, often lack the physical or emotional safety net of colleagues nearby. The combination of professional pressure and personal fear can slowly hollow people out.

Taking Proactive Steps for our Safety

We work with people at their most vulnerable, distressed, and volatile. Family and criminal law practitioners in particular, often stand in the crosshairs of displaced anger and grief. While we can never remove risk entirely, there are meaningful steps we can take to reduce it - through awareness, preparation, and sensible protective measures that can help to keep us safe and make a real difference to our peace of mind

The lawyers who shared their own personal experiences offered a wealth of practical strategies. These measures aren’t signs of paranoia; they’re professional prudence. Many are simple but powerful:

• Premises security – cameras, door buzzers, and dual exits.

• Personal safety protocols – never meeting volatile clients alone, keeping car keys in hand, arranging for check-ins after late appearances.

• Information hygiene – limiting online details, using silent elector status, suppressing home addresses on property records.

• De-escalation training – learning to recognise and diffuse tension early, through body language, tone and pacing.

• Workplace policies – clear procedures for threats, aggressive behaviour, and after-hours work.

• Peer connection – ensuring practitioners (especially juniors or sole practitioners) have colleagues to call or text if they ever feel unsafe.

And most importantly, supporting each other. We should be vigilant not just for our own safety, but for our colleagues’ as well - especially those on the frontline of direct client contact.

What About the System?

It’s worth asking, too, what structural support exists. Courts have security personnel, but many suburban registries and regional circuits do not. Legal aid offices, community legal centres, and sole practitioners often operate from ordinary shopfronts or converted houses - spaces never designed for high-risk encounters.

Insurers, professional associations, and regulators could play a role here. Mandatory safety audits, access to security grants, or inclusion of safety protocols in continuing professional development are small but meaningful steps.

There’s also scope for judicial and procedural awareness - for instance, ensuring practitioners have safe exits from courtrooms when tensions escalate, or that remote appearances remain available in high-risk matters.

Compassion Without Compromise

Ultimately, most aggression we face is born of desperation. People arrive in the family or criminal jurisdiction at breaking point - frightened, grieving, humiliated, angry. They lash out because they feel unheard or powerless.

Understanding that context helps maintain empathy, but it must never justify tolerating abuse or danger. Compassion and boundaries can coexist.

Part of professionalism, I think, is knowing where those boundaries lie - and having the courage to enforce them without guilt.

Why This Conversation Matters

I didn’t write this to alarm anyone. The goal isn’t to sensationalise risk or paint the profession as perilous. It’s to shine a light on something too often hidden: that the work we do - especially in family, criminal, and child-related jurisdictions - places us in emotionally charged situations where the potential for harm is real.

Acknowledging that doesn’t make us weak. It makes us responsible.

By talking openly, we normalise precaution. We create room for younger practitioners to admit fear without shame. We encourage firms to build systems that protect staff. And we remind ourselves that courage in this profession isn’t the absence of fear - it’s the choice to do the work with awareness of it, and taking the initiative to manage it.

Moving Forward

Hearing the sheer number of stories shared by colleagues, and the gravity of what so many have endured, was confronting and sobering - forcing me to see the realities of our profession in a way I hadn’t before.

I recognise how fortunate I’ve been by comparison - spared, at least to this point, from such encounters - yet I also feel a deep sadness that these circumstances form part of the lived reality for so many in our profession.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget my old friend’s offhand comment about the firebombs. It opened my eyes to the pernicious reality that for many practitioners, safety is an ever-present concern - one that can’t be ignored.

We can’t control the volatility of others, and we can’t eliminate risk entirely, but we can acknowledge it, plan for it, and protect one another. In doing so, we make it just that little bit easier to do our jobs - to advocate fiercely, compassionately, and without fear.

Because no one should have to choose between doing good work and feeling safe.

By Ashleigh Morris, Family Law Barrister at Victorian Bar.

For briefing enquiries, please email a.morris@vicbar.com.au or contact Patterson's List on 03 9225 7888.