The legal industry’s game changers – Black icons making their mark

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To celebrate Black History Month, LawCareers.Net highlights three trailblazers within the legal profession.

The industry has felt highly gatekept and difficult to enter for those of minority backgrounds, especially Black aspiring lawyers, for far too long. However, a new generation of Black lawyers is reshaping the landscape. It’s vital that we continue to platform the stories of those who’ve contributed to the profession, broken boundaries and set a path for future lawyers. Among those leading the transformation are Mass Ndow-Njie, Barbara Mills KC and Christian Weaver.

Mass Ndow-Njie – breaking barriers, bridging the bar

The first trailblazer on our list is multi-award-winning barrister Mass Ndow-Njie, who is helping to reshape the Bar’s culture around access and inclusion. After being called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2019 and gaining pupillage at the Government Legal Department, Mass has since specialised in clinical negligence, personal injury, inquests, inquiries, international, sports and personal injury law. He’s currently practising at 7 Bedford Row chambers and is recognised as a leading barrister.

Mass was notably appointed as junior counsel to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry in 2022 and was also called to the Bar of The Gambia in 2024. He’s been described as dedicating himself to opening the doors of opportunity for people from non-traditional backgrounds. In 2020, Mass founded the pioneering organisation Bridging the Bar (BTB), which is now one of the leading diversity access schemes. BTB aims to increase the equality of access to opportunities at the Bar across all underrepresented groups by supporting students from minority backgrounds and facilitating the equality of access to opportunities.

Barbara Mills KC – leading with a legacy

Barbara Mills KC is a renowned British family law barrister with more than 30 years of experience. Barbara took silk in 2020 and made history as the first Black chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales (in its 131 year history) in 2025 – a landmark for representation at the highest level.

Take a look at what Barbara set out in her inaugural address as her key priorities for the year ahead.

Barbara specialises in complex child cases and regularly advises and represents high-profile parties in private law matters. She’s often instructed by local authorities, serves as a Deputy High Court Judge and has been a recorder on the South Eastern circuit for more than a decade. She’s been a proponent of encouraging family lawyers to advocate for arbitration as the better option to court-based resolutions and was notably involved in a groundbreaking case, representing Rights of Women, Women’s Aid, Welsh Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis England and Wales, where the court of appeal reassessed their approach to domestic abuse. Barbara is also the joint head of her chambers, 4 Paper Buildings.

Christian Weaver – making the law speak for everyone

Christian Weaver is an award-winning advocate specialising in inquests, inquiries, actions against the state, prison law and public law at Garden Court North Chambers. He sits on the board of legal reform charity Justice and has worked on important, law defining cases such as that of Exodus Eyob – a one-year-old boy who died after falling from the high-rise window he lived in – and Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old boy who died following prolonged exposure to mould in his home.

Christian work led to the introduction of Awaab’s Law, effective from October 2025, which demands social landlords to fix hazards and dangerous housing conditions. Christian is also an author, penning two crucial books, The Law in 60 Seconds: A Pocket Guide to Your Rights and more recently, Your Right to Protest: Understand it, Use it. These texts are significant as they’ve made important legal concepts accessible and relevant to the everyday citizen.

If you’re interesting in discovering more great reads, check out this article for a list of books by Black authors to entertain, educate and inspire you.

They walked so others could run

These achievements and transformations are only possible thanks to the work of other pioneers within the legal sector, both past and present – from Dame Linda Dobbs DBE, a retired High Court Judge and the first non-white lawyer to be appointed to a senior court in the country, to award-winning barrister Dr Tunde Okewale MBE, founder of Urban Lawyers – an organisation founded in 2010 focusing on educating young people and improving accessibility to the legal profession. These individuals, alongside countless other changemakers, are helping to modernise the profession, improve access to justice and empower many.