Immigration lawyers deal with all legal matters relating to immigration and nationality. The work ranges from asylum and human rights claims through applications by family members and students to advising businesses on securing immigration status for their employees. There is a significant and increasing European law element, and many cases raise important human rights issues. The law is rapidly developing, in terms of both statute law and jurisprudence, and procedural timeframes are tight. There is a good deal of overlap with social welfare, mental health, prison law, criminal law and civil actions.

Although Alison Pickup first toyed with the idea of law as a career back in the final year of her modern languages degree, it was not until four years after graduating that she discovered the Bar was her vocation. She spent time paralegalling in an immigration law firm, handling appeals casework and presenting her own cases at the Immigration Appellate Authority (now the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First-Tier Tribunal), which sparked her interest in advocacy. Explaining what made her give up life in a law firm to pursue her ambitions, she says: "I really enjoyed going to court and presenting cases. Later on, I started drafting grounds for further appeal and I found I enjoyed the fine tuning of written submissions. That was one of the aspects of my work that I liked most and found most challenging; on the other hand, what I found frustrating was dealing with things like funding applications to the Legal Services Commission, so I wanted to distance myself from those politics."

Alison did her pupillage at Doughty Street Chambers, a multi-disciplinary practice with a leaning towards human rights and legal aid work. She remembers the period as "amazing, in terms of the work and the learning curve, and very challenging". Now a tenant, Alison spends about 70% of her time on immigration work; the majority comprises refugee law, which means that a large chunk of her day is spent arguing appeals in tribunal. Mixed in with this is a dose of judicial review work around fresh asylum claims, issues arising out of Dublin Regulation transfers and unlawful detention claims, trying to get people released and/or awarded damages. Back when she was a pupil, Alison's caseload wasn't so weighted towards immigration. "I do much more now. Even though in my second six my supervisor was a specialist and the work I did with him was almost all immigration work, I found that generally immigration solicitors are not very willing to instruct pupils."

As she's moved up the ladder, her work has become substantive, she says: "I'm doing more asylum, deportation and urgent judicial review cases; when someone is facing removal, you need to get a judicial review claim lodged quickly in order to stop them being removed. Often there is very little notice given - you might have three days or less to go through the whole pre-action process and get judicial review grounds prepared and lodged with the High Court. That can be quite intense pressure."

Given her advocacy-heavy workload, a typical day for Alison revolves around court. "My day will usually start with finalising and preparing for a hearing. When I arrive at court, I'll meet with the client and then do the hearing itself, which will usually last for a couple of hours - that will be the first part of the day. In the afternoon I'll come back to chambers and either prepare a case for the next day, work on advice or do some research. If I'm not in court, I'm usually working in chambers dealing with paperwork and responding to queries from solicitors. I get quite a lot of queries asking about a small point, which lead on to bigger pieces of work."

Making her case in court is the aspect of her job that Alison finds really satisfying - and it's even better when the judge gets stuck in: "It's great when the judge on a case is really engaged. Some will just sit and listen to it and won't really engage during the hearing, but others question and challenge what you say, and push you to justify your case. It's really good when that happens, because it's a challenge and you feel like the judge really cares about the outcome." But one of the harder parts is dealing with the fear that if you mess up, the consequences are incredibly serious. Learning to handle that pressure is quite a challenge, says Alison. "You need to care both enough and not too much, or you'll never get any sleep! I got used to the pressure in this field when I worked in solicitors' firms. Every now and again I catch myself going too far one way or the other - sometimes I'll feel myself getting too involved, in which case I'll have to step back. On the other hand, because you're trying not to get too emotionally involved, you detach yourself; but then you have to remember how important this is to the person involved."

A wide array of skills and strengths are required for success at the immigration Bar. In particular, resilience is especially important. "The job can be very stressful, partly because of the consequences and speed at which cases move, and because it's very fast moving procedurally. As a result, you need good time management skills and the ability to handle stress. You also need empathy - to care about the client and understand what they're going through. An interest in world affairs is helpful too, because a lot of the time you're dealing with the politics of countries all over the world."

More generally, when it comes to getting a foot in the door at chambers, Alison urges budding barristers not to be afraid of taking it slow. "Work out where you really want to be and what kind of work you want to do. If that takes time, don't worry: people often come out of university and think that they have to get a pupillage straight away. In fact, increasingly people are older when they get pupillage. If you take your time and work out exactly what you want and are focused about getting relevant experience, talking to people who are working in that area and getting the exposure, you'll increase your chances of getting pupillage and of enjoying it once you've got it."