Family life & clerking: realities, challenges and what helps

IBC members are invited to sign up to our Educational Event. This is an online webinar. Please make sure you hold 2026 IBC membership, before requesting your place.

Balancing a clerking career with family life can feel demanding, unpredictable and, at times, isolating — especially in roles that are fast‑paced, reactive and shaped by the needs of others. This session aims to brings clerks and chambers staff together from every kind of chambers and every stage of the parenting journey to talk honestly about what helps, what gets in the way, and what support really looks like in practice.

Whether you’re thinking about starting a family, currently pregnant, newly returned from leave, parenting older children, or managing someone who is navigating this transition, this session is for you. Different chambers work in different ways, and families do too. This session welcomes everyone, whatever route brought you to parenthood, and we want all attendees to feel seen, understood and included. Before the event, you’ll receive a short pre‑session questionnaire so you can share your circumstances and shape the discussion. You’ll also have the chance to submit questions for our speakers to answer at the end.

We’ll keep the main session to an hour, so it fits comfortably into your lunch break, with our speakers staying on for up to 30 minutes afterwards for anyone who wants to continue the conversation or ask additional questions.

Please do join us for a practical, open and supportive discussion designed to help clerks and chambers staff at all levels feel more confident, informed and equipped — whether you’re preparing for parenthood yourself or supporting someone else through it.

Our panel:

Sharon Charlton-Thomson

Sharon is the Founder of Comma, she has been an Executive Coach, Speaker and Psychotherapist for almost 30 years. She has worked with thousands of working families in the workplace and clinically, she brings clarity to deep theory because of her huge experience. She is warm and fun to work with and combines her understanding of child development with what it takes to be a working parent. She is a sought after Speaker on Attachment Theory and she is passionate about the health of future generations. Sharon is mum to two adopted children, Tilly aged 21 and Sam aged 19. 

Katie Myles

Katie is a Clerk with 20 years of experience and is the Team Leader of the Senior KC’s team at Essex Court Chambers, having previously spent nearly a decade at 4 Pump Court.   She has a law degree from King’s College London and having served for several years on the IBC Committee, is a regular advocate for the retention of female clerks.  Katie was nominated by the Legal 500 for Clerk of the Year in 2022.

Katie is married to a full-time serving member of the Armed Forces making her a part time single parent to 3 boys, stepsons aged 19 and 17 and her own son, aged 6.  She has 5 years experience of managing full-time clerking with motherhood.

Emily Martin

Emily is the Senior Clerk at 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square. She helps lead a busy Chambers of over 100 members and a clerking and support team of 16 staff.

Alongside the day-to-day demands of running a busy clerking operation, Emily plays a key role in Chambers’ client strategy, business development and long-term growth. Much of her work involves building and maintaining senior client relationships, developing new opportunities and working closely with colleagues across Chambers to support its continued growth in the UK and overseas. She is also actively involved in Chambers’ diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and is passionate about creating working practices and opportunities that are fair, accessible and supportive.

Like many clerks, Emily knows that a busy and often unpredictable career does not simply switch off when the working day ends. As the parent of a five-year-old, she is all too familiar with the reality of trying to balance a senior, client-facing role with school routines, family commitments, unexpected emergencies and everything else that comes with raising a young child.

Drawing on both her 17 years’ experience in clerking and her own experience as a working parent, Emily brings the perspective of both a senior leader and someone who understands first-hand the daily juggle that many working families face. She is passionate about creating space for honest conversations about the realities many of us experience and recognises that there is no single formula for successfully balancing family life and a career in clerking.