Fake Law

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A powerful polemic' Sunday Times'A compelling, eye-opening read' Daily Express– Did an illegal immigrant avoid deportation because he had a cat?– Is the law on the side of the burglar who enters your home? – Are unelected judges ‘enemies of the people’? Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society. Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge – worse, we risk letting them make us complicit. Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds a defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy that is as entertaining as it is vital.

Well written, both punchy and providing concise explanations of complex laws . . . a powerful polemic that also acts as a primer about our legal rights, The Secret Barrister mounts a powerful defence of lawyers and the law from their noisy detractors . . . this is an urgent and highly readable book. You will come away from it feeling that your mind has been purged, Fake Law is a compelling, eye-opening read and should act as a wake-up call for anyone with an interest in how the law, and, by extension, society and justice function – that is to say, every one of us., The authority of this author is in the sheer quality of the writing. To keep up to this standard in tweet after tweet, blogpost after blogpost, and now book after book is remarkable – especially if, as the author tells us, they do all this in addition to a busy and stressful criminal practice, I enjoyed reading this book. It is well-written and informative and the SB is right to lament the levels of public ignorance about the way the system works.

The Secret Barrister is a junior barrister specializing in criminal law, and the author of the award-winning blog of the same name. The Secret Barrister writes for many publications, including The Times, the Guardian, New Statesman, iNews, Esquire and Counsel magazine.In 2016 and 2017, the Secret Barrister was named Independent Blogger of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. In 2018, the Secret Barrister was named Legal Personality of the Year at the Law Society Awards.Their first book, The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, was a Sunday Times number-one bestseller and has been in the top-ten bestseller list for more than a year. It won the Books Are My Bag Non-Fiction Award 2018, and was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year and the Specsavers Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2018.