Stephen Cavalier

St Edmund Hall 1980, Law

My dad left school at 14 and went to night school to get qualifications before working as a heating and ventilating engineer. My mum had worked as a secretary and gave up working when I was born. I went to a state infant and junior school in Surrey and then passed my 11 plus and went to Woking Grammar School. With the closure of grammar schools in 1978 I went to Woking Sixth Form College. I took Fourth Term entry to Oxford and was accepted to St Edmund Hall to do Jurisprudence, or law as most people would know it! I was there from 1980 to 1983. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to University.

I chose my degree course because I wanted to become a lawyer: to represent people who had been mistreated and who needed to take on employers, or others, who had injured them or treated them badly. Since 1987 I have been working for a trade union law firm. When I was doing the course, and since, I found law a fascinating subject intellectually, politically, socially and philosophically. I have written and spoken on various legal issues, mainly relating to employment law.

I had opportunities to pursue particular interests within my degree. I chose the option of Employment law, which included industrial and discrimination law and which I have practised since qualifiying. I also particularly enjoyed Jurisprudence (legal philosophy) and aspects of Contract and Tort law which I have also followed up in my career.
 
I had two great law tutors: Derrick Wyatt and Adrian Briggs. I went to Derrick's retirement function last summer and saw them both. There is still a genuine warmth there after nearly 30 years. They are great lawyers and teachers, but also on a personal level really connected with their students.
 
I enjoyed the tutorial system. I found that researching for and writing essays that were then discussed in tutorial groups of two students was a great discipline and promoted clarity of exposition and the ability to discuss and defend ideas. You couldn't get away with waffle. I enjoyed working independently.
 
Finals weren't my favourite part, but I preferred exams to continuous assessment and I was OK with the intensity of doing them all in one go. Putting on sub fusc certainly added to the tension. I enjoyed twanging the bloke in front's braces after the last exam, then the spraying of cheap champagne, drinking, punting and falling in the Cherwell.
 
I also enjoyed the fact that there were only 12 lawyers in each year at my college which built a camaraderie. And the fact that being in a college meant you had friends studying the whole range of subjects - not just lawyers - in a small community; plus meeting lawyers from other colleges. I preferred this to being confined to the law faculty. The college system does promote a sense of identity.
 
It is quite possible that I would have been self-confident and argumentative anyway - but Oxford certainly helped. And it gave me the confidence to face challenges and to deal with people from all backgrounds without feeling intimidated or inferior.
 
I think Oxford was a great place to study, and to live. The more state school students that go there, the better: they are essential to its character, its relevance and its continued success.