The lost solitude of the Bar

How the culture of constant response is eroding the inwardness our profession needs

The OECD has brought a problem that speaks directly to the legal profession. Better known for tracking tax, economy and productivity, in its last How’s Life? reports, up to 14% of people across member countries feel lonely most or all of the time. The mention of so many being lonely struck me, without realising how often we confuse loneliness with solitude.

Loneliness is a symptom of disconnection from others in this hyperconnected world. Solitude, by contrast, is the capacity for inwardness that seems to be vanishing. 

We’ve pathologised being alone, for fear of loneliness, treating it as something to be fixed, filled, or avoided.

But in losing solitude, we lose something foundational, not just personally, but professionally.

At the Bar, this is painfully clear.

As a barrister, I’ve observed how solitude, once essential to our profession, is slipping away. The pressure to always respond to courts, solicitors, clients, and even my internal standards leaves little room to think alone. Some days feel like a blur of emails and urgent briefs, with no space to remain. Solitude has become a rare privilege when it used to be part of the work.

It troubles me how little this is acknowledged. At the bar, we’re taught to speak well and respond quickly, but rarely to sit in silence. No one reminds us that good advocacy begins in stillness — reading deeply, thinking slowly, allowing an argument to take form before it is spoken. Instead, we learn to perform before we learn to reflect. We rarely find time or space for a deep or reflective conversation, even at our Bar’s social events.

Fortunately, the architecture of the inns acts as a powerful reminder. Walking through the courtyards of the Temple or sitting in Lincoln’s Inn library, I’m reminded that these spaces were once designed for thought. The quietness of the Inns, with their churches and chapels, stands in sharp contrast to the buzziness of modern skyscrapers, where the majority of legal work seems to happen these days. 

Advocacy is not performance alone. It is thought, structure, and judgment—none of which can happen without space to think. If we want to do meaningful legal work, we have to fight for and protect that stillness.

Any meaningful practice of law must reclaim time to think, not just tactically, but critically, politically, and personally. Like many, I often find myself caught in a system obsessed with outputs, billables, and appearances. I push back where I can, because I’ve come to see that without inwardness, the law risks losing its conscience. And so do we.