Profile of Abimbola Johnson

I went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, a private school in Elstree. We were really encouraged to set our sights high academically, so applying to Oxford was very much seen as ‘the normal thing to do.’ My Nigerian heritage reinforced that: every adult in my family had gone to university and the expectation was always to be a high achiever. The majority of them had a law degree, even if they didn’t go on to practice! Gina Yashere makes a joke that if you’re Nigerian you have four options in life: being a doctor, lawyer, engineer or a disappointment! My family were always extremely supportive and continue to be but certainly the expectations were always to enter a solid, traditional and stable career.

I’ve always been quite precocious and assertive. I loved reading, debating and standing up for others. With my family’s background in law, I grew up with people pointing out that my attributes and interests lined up with becoming a lawyer, specifically an advocate.

I therefore felt really drawn to the Bar. As it is so competitive, aiming to obtain a law degree from Oxford made sense. Something that would show on my CV that I had a strong intellect and academic curiosity that would stand me in good stead in this vocation. However, really, I’d wanted to read history. It had been my favourite subject at school and I think I’d have found studying it really fulfilling.

I went to St Peter’s College between 2006 and 2009. I’d originally applied to Balliol but ended up with an offer from Peter’s and I absolutely loved being there. It was much less traditional than other colleges. I sang with the Oxford Belles which meant I got to attend a lot of college balls for free and we even did an LA tour visiting College level acapella groups out there. I played netball and I got a half-blue for Athletics too. I regularly attended African-Caribbean Society events. I ended up with a core group of friends whom I remain close to even now. To be honest, I didn’t actually enjoy my degree! I wasn’t in love with the law at the time. I wanted to be a lawyer more than I’d wanted to study it. I found it quite hard to motivate myself to study, to read through cases, and write essays for tutorials.

In my third year, however, we got to choose modules. I chose public international law and moral and political philosophy. Looking at the law through an international and philosophical lens brought it to life and as stressful as I found studying for finals, being able to look at all of the modules together made it click for me. I left Oxford wishing I’d had more breathing space to really enjoy the subjects we learnt. I’d found the constant pressure of termly collections, the heavy reading list and essay rotation draining. Particularly after years of attending an academically challenging school. Having said that, the essay crises have been good preparation for the realities of working to tight deadlines at the Bar!

I returned to Oxford recently to teach a lecture on ‘Hate Crime and Discrimination’ as part of the FHS option ‘Advanced Criminal Law’. I was asked to do so by Alex Benn who’s a fellow barrister. I loved the fact that this was part of the optional modules, the aspect of my degree I’d enjoyed the most and felt it would be a good opportunity to show students the real life relevance of the things they learn at Oxford; show them how their degrees will enable them to go out into the world and make a difference from day one. I used it as an opportunity to provide examples of how case papers would look, and the practical application of the theories and principals they’d been studying in the preceding weeks.

This is something I’ve taken into my own work. I’ve been a barrister for eleven years now and have developed a ‘portfolio’ practice, I work in criminal defence but I’m also involved in public inquiry work and I chair a board that scrutinises all 43 police forces across England and Wales in relation to their implementation of a race action plan that aims to make the police ‘anti-racist’.

The skills I honed at Oxford: reading through dense paperwork; analysis; looking not just at the letter of what someone has committed to but also the principles behind those commitments have really helped me throughout my career and I see it in particular in this role.

One of the key areas of friction that the race action plan is working on is how the police can work more transparently and with more accountability. If they want to win the trust and confidence of people from Black communities, they need to show a willingness to listen, change and hold themselves to account. Sometimes that can be as simple as clearer data collection, making minutes of meetings more readily available, bringing community members into decision making processes, looking at the language they use when doing all of the above. A lot of that aligns with principles and approaches I studied at Oxford.

It’s been fulfilling to know that even over a decade later, those late nights in the library were worth it!