ALUMNI STORIES
Legally speaking Professor Sarah Green (1995), Commissioner for Commercial and Common Law at the Law Commission, speaks to Katie Bacon (2019) about topics arising from a talk she gave to the Younger Society KB: At the Younger Society’s Michaelmas event, you told us about your time at Balliol. Could you tell us about your journey to Balliol? SG: I knew nothing about Balliol, or indeed any college, but a friend had recently got a place at Oriel to study Law. He enjoyed it and told me I should give it a go, and he advised me to visit a few colleges to see which one felt right. I applied for an Open Day place at Balliol simply because it was the first in the prospectus. and the evening I arrived, I realised it felt 'right’. I attended one other college Open Day, but it didn’t have the same inviting effect on me! I went to a state school in the West Midlands, which I loved, but it didn’t have a huge amount of know-how then about Oxbridge admissions. My teachers were amazing, though, in finding out what they could about what I needed to do – this was back in the days when there was an entrance exam as well as an interview. I did the English, Critical Analysis and General papers. I remember I got to write about Keats and Shakespeare, and I have always been very unusual in that I enjoy exams anyway, so it sticks in my mind as a highly enjoyable (although totally mysterious) adventure. I kept this experience at the front of my mind much later when I became a member of the Law Faculty at Bristol University as a Fellow and took on the role of Admissions Director. I tried to demystify the process, and to make it as positive an experience as these things can be, whatever the outcome.
‘It amazes me how, even today, I will be asked a question and, in answering it, dredge up something I learnt for a lecture or tutorial a decade and a half ago.’
KB: In your career you have seen many different sides of the legal profession. How do they differ and what have you enjoyed most about each? SG: I love the way lawyers think, regardless of the particular context in which they are working. What has always fascinated me is the way that lawyers ‘discuss issues’ with each other, whether in a professional context or not. Lawyers think nothing of having highly spirited discussions with one another whilst remaining on very good personal terms, in a way which I think looks surprising and/or amusing to those
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FLOREAT DOMUS JUNE 2021
Professor Sarah Green
