WHAT SUCCESS MEANS BEYOND JOB TITLES
For so many law students I know, success has one definition: qualify as a lawyer. For me, it was the finish line that would make everything official. It was not just a professional milestone but proof of belonging in a profession that does not always make space for women who look like me.
What I did not expect was that the legal world would teach me something different before I ever crossed that line.
My path has not run through a training contract in a City firm. I began where many of us do, with an LLB in the UK, but the road from there did not lead to the destination I had pictured. Instead it took me into international humanitarian work, spanning diplomacy and human rights. I supported people fleeing persecution and engaged with international legal mechanisms, while much of my focus centred on protecting children affected by armed conflict.
For a long time, my inner voice told me these roles were just an intermission before the inevitable. Sooner or later, I would have to qualify, and only then would any of it really count. That voice was persuasive, not least because it echoed the voices of family and the weight of cultural expectation. It was also wrong for me, and it took me time to understand why.
The shift in my understanding came through the practical work I was doing, from supporting children at risk of exploitation to teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers. This was where law became real, and where I saw that a legal problem often cannot be alleviated without first meeting the humanitarian needs beneath it. A lawyer may ultimately transform someone's legal position, but protection is rarely secured by one person alone. Some of the most meaningful work is done in the roles that stand alongside them.
My motivation to enter the law was always to fight injustice. What I had not questioned was the assumption that I needed to qualify first, that the fight began on the other side of a certificate. Yet the injustice I cared about was happening now. The people facing it are often in the most complex, compounded situations, where a qualified lawyer is rarely accessible at all. Being present in that gap became my measure of success.
I truly understand why titles and qualifications carry such weight for BAME women. Many of us carry the hopes of parents and grandparents who were never given the chance to enter rooms like these. A title feels like armour, proof that the sacrifices meant something. In many of our cultures, professions such as law, medicine and engineering are shorthand for safety and respect, and ambition is expressed through them almost as an inheritance.
None of that is wrong. But I have come to think the greatest tribute to those who came before us is not to squeeze ourselves into the narrowest definition of achievement. It is to use the freedom they never had, to define success on our own terms, in rooms they were told did not exist.
I have not closed the door on qualifying as a lawyer, but I no longer organise my life around it. It is one possible chapter in my story, but not what determines whether the story is worth telling.
Perhaps the truth is that success was never meant to be defined once. Mine has changed shape more than once already, and I suspect it will change again. Ask me again in five years, and I'm sure the answer will be different. Is success a job? A moment? Or something you only notice when it's missing? I no longer think there is one answer, and I have stopped wanting one. The only definition of success I distrust now is one that never changes, because it usually means it was never really yours.
