The qualities that make an effective advocate are rarely acquired in law school alone. Emily Windsor traces her analytical instincts further back — to an interest in debating during her teenage years, to subjects like English and history that demanded the construction and contestation of arguments, and to an early appreciation for thinking on her feet. Those foundations shaped the kind of barrister she became.

Windsor has spent her career at the chancery Bar, a specialism that demands close engagement with legal complexity and the ability to explain that complexity clearly to judges who are working through it alongside you. Her approach to preparation reflects both the demands of that work and her broader understanding of what makes advocacy effective.

The first requirement is factual and legal command. Windsor expects herself to have read everything in the case, to carry the facts without needing to search for them, and to be ready to explain the relevant cases and statutory materials to a judge — not in outline, but in enough depth to handle questions confidently. This is not a standard she describes as exceptional. It is the minimum she considers professionally necessary.

Building that command requires more than working through individual case files. Windsor has contributed to practitioner texts in her area of law, setting aside two to three weeks each year for the purpose — typically during summer holidays, when the immediate pressures of practice ease. Writing for other practitioners demands accuracy and clarity at a different level from preparing a client’s case. It requires engaging with the law as a structure to be understood in full, not just applied to the facts in front of you. That exercise, repeated over years, produces the depth of understanding that distinguishes an advocate who can engage flexibly with a judge’s questions from one who can only recite prepared positions.

The preparation Windsor describes does not stop at her own case. She stresses the importance of approaching your position as an opponent would — identifying the weaknesses, working out the questions a judge is likely to raise, and thinking through the precedents that might be deployed against you. The advocate who has addressed those questions privately is prepared for them. The one who has not is meeting them for the first time in court — which is not the right moment.

Her career has spanned a significant evolution in how advocacy is conducted. Remote hearings are now a settled feature of practice, particularly for shorter matters, case management, and proceedings that do not involve witnesses. Windsor’s view is that technical preparation has become part of professional preparation — not an optional extra. She considers audio quality the most critical variable in a remote hearing: a judge who cannot hear submissions clearly cannot adjudicate them. Testing your setup, ensuring your documents are accessible, and removing the possibility of avoidable technical failure are all part of being ready.

The evolution in written advocacy is equally significant. When Windsor was called to the Bar, oral performance was the measure of the finest practitioners. Today, written submissions carry comparable weight, and many cases are shaped — or settled — before a hearing opens.

What connects these changes to the foundations Windsor describes is a consistent principle: preparation is the work that makes everything else possible, and judging your own readiness honestly is the discipline that preparation requires.