Speaking recently on The Lawyers Weekly Show, Rabia Siddique – a retired British Army officer, former war terrorism and war crimes prosecutor and criminal and human rights lawyer – said that lawyers have to realise their potential and duty to create change around them.

Such change can only come, however, if lawyers can recognise their own vulnerability.

Ms Siddique has an intricate understanding of what it means to be resilient and the importance of helping those in need, having been a survivor of both child sexual abuse and a hostage situation in war-torn Iraq (during which she was tortured).

Those experiences left her “incredibly broken”, she told Lawyers Weekly, but also gave her insight into the vulnerability that she, and other lawyers, must tap into if they are to effect meaningful change around them.

“I think, as lawyers, we tend to be quite reluctant at stepping into our own vulnerability because we are conditioned to believe that we have to appear strong and dependable and together, and almost that we need to paper over the cracks because that's how we have to appear [to] clients and the community,” she said.

“What was very important in my journey is that, as a result of my treatment and the discrimination case, and the hell that I was put through, publicly and privately, the greatest learning is that we are all vulnerable, that we are all human, that we have to embrace our stories and we have to step into those vulnerabilities because we need to bring more humanity into our practice and into our leadership and into our lives. That, as well as the fact that we all have the capacity to impact change, was the greatest lesson for me.”

When asked if such a manta is applicable for any personal or professional scenario that lawyers might face, or if it was more targeted to particularly challenging experiences – such as the current global coronavirus pandemic – Ms Siddique said it is both.

VIEW ALL

“We all have a sphere of influence, whether we’re speaking about a particular legal case that we’re working on or talking about our position and our influence as community leaders in a more macro perspective,” she espoused.

“We all have a voice. We’re all called upon and looked upon as leaders and the privileged ones that do have a voice and resources and influence, and so I firmly believe that it’s incumbent upon us to be worthy of those responsibilities.

“And, that comes from the way that we practice our profession. We’ve got to bring the ethics and the value and the humanity back to the foundations and the forefront because I think, slowly, we’ve been losing our way as a profession. It has to do with how we show up in our community, in our society.”

Now, more so than ever, lawyers have the privilege and gift of influence to play a significant role in the communities around us, Ms Siddique submitted. But, she added, lawyers must first centre themselves, including by tapping into one’s vulnerability.

“There’s the metaphor of we have to put the oxygen mask over ourselves before we can help someone else, so I think it’s incumbent upon us to firstly make sure that we are okay and we are centred and we have made at least some sense or return to some stage of calm amid the confusion and the chaos. And, then, we have an important role to play to help those around us,” she said.

In the same episode, Ms Siddique spoke about the necessity for lawyers to lead.

To listen to the full conversation with Rabia Siddique, click below: